Roma literature has long been suppressed, persecuted, and overlooked in the Central European literary scene, despite its wealth of stories and importance. Founded in 2012, KHER—which means a house or a room in Romani—is the only independent publishing house in the Czech Republic to focus exclusively on the publication and promotion of Romani authors, a homeland for the support and respect of Romani writers’ creative endeavours. In this two-part interview, Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large Julia Sherwood has spoken to KHER’s co-founder and director Radka Patočková, and one of its editors, Karolína Ryvolová, first on the founding and development of KHER as a renowned publishing house, and then on Roma literature and identity in the broader literary scene.
Julia Sherwood: It must have taken some courage to found a press focusing exclusively on Roma writers, particularly in the Czech Republic, a country that—as you, Radka, put it in a recent interview—”has a long way to go in terms of its relations with the Roma.“ You went on to describe common reactions you received: “How many Roma authors do we have? Who would buy and read their books? What might the quality of Romani writing be like?” So my question is: What made you embark on this risky enterprise despite all these challenges, and what was the personal and professional path that brought you to this project?
Radka Patočková (RP): Let me start with the end of your question. Since the early days, when we founded the publishing house, our team at KHER has undergone some changes. In those days we were in our thirties, full of youthful enthusiasm and convinced by our previous experience that one could take action and effect change, rather than just talk about it. Had someone told us about everything this would involve over the years, and had we known what we would have to go through professionally as well as in terms of our private lives, we might have become disheartened. Some have gradually drifted away, but they continue to root for us from the sidelines and we are grateful to them for their time and enthusiasm at the start.
We met as students of Romani studies at Charles University, and our shared interest in literature brought us to publishing. Cultural and financial management, on the other hand—the nitty-gritty of publishing, marketing, and accounting—were areas we had to get into gradually. We learned that love of literature, closeness to the Roma people, knowledge of Romani and the realities of the life of the Roma, or friendly relations with authors—all of that is not enough to bring a book into the world. We had to blaze the trail slowly, one step at a time, sometimes going back or hitting a dead end, but now we feel increasingly at home in the vast area of activity that publishing entails. To sum up: in April 2023 we are much wiser but also more realistic than we were when we set up KHER eleven years ago. And that’s a good thing; perhaps too much rational thinking in 2013 could have meant that the idea would have remained on paper and in discussions in cafés.
JS: Since its inception, KHER has published over a dozen books—starting with e-books and later moving to print—ranging from history, biography, memoirs, and fiction to children’s stories, and you have also organised writing workshops and educational activities. How many people are involved in running KHER and how is your work funded?
RP: KHER is an association made up of eleven members, some with a background in Romani studies or economics, and the rest Roma professionals—an IT specialist, historian, journalist, author, and translator. However, the core group that ensures the day-to-day running of the publishing house consists of just five women. So when people want to come to see us, we tell them with a smile that they’re welcome as long as they don’t mind visiting us in our kitchens. That is another thing I think is remarkable: we don’t have an actual office, a space for working, discussing things, and coming up with creative ideas, which can sometimes be a disadvantage. Fortunately, Prague is full of cafés and some are prepared to have our group working there on a regular basis.
The lack of office space well illustrates our financial situation. For the first seven years we relied on government grants, which, with one exception, are quite meagre and not sufficient to cover all our costs. It was enough to publish one book a year and to organise a few readings for our authors, but not to pay all our salaries, so for many years we did the work virtually for free. Fortunately, about three years ago we managed to convince a donor in the United States of the importance of our work for the Roma and society as a whole. Thanks to him, we have learned what it feels like to be employees remunerated for their work and time. We still tend to do a lot more than is part of our job descriptions, but this support alone has really given us a kind of wings—it’s something we dared not dream of. If it weren’t for this, I suspect we would eventually run out of steam, and everyday human concerns about providing for our families would result in us slowly winding down our activities.
JS: Karolína, your book Špačkem tužky na manžetě. Příběh literatury Romů (In Pencil, on the Cuff: The Story of the Liiterature of the Roma People), published in 2021, is the first comprehensive Czech-language survey of Roma literature. This story obviously can’t be squeezed into a single answer, but perhaps you could briefly outline the main milestones—or, to use your metaphor—key events in this narrative, and its main protagonists, against the backdrop of the political and historical developments in former Czechoslovakia and, later, the Czech Republic?
Karolína Ryvolová (KR): We still don’t know enough about the early days of Romani writing—not enough research has been done into the actual process of how it came into being in the early 1970s—to present a complete picture. I prefer to speak about the story of Roma literature, as stories are the stuff that Romani writing is made of, and stories allow a certain degree of fabrication and/or interpretation.
In 1969, the Union of Gypsies-Roma was founded, the first Romani self-organised organisation in the history of Czechoslovakia, and it became a major tool of empowerment as well as a role model for generations to come. In its newsletter Románo ľil, the very first texts—fairy tales, poems, songs, stories—by Roma were published, both in Czech and Romani. Their writers constituted the first generation of Roma writers, who more or less continued writing privately even after the UGR was forcibly disbanded by the communist authorities in 1973, to be followed by the period of so-called normalisation with its uncompromising assimilation policy. The same writers re-emerged after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and started publishing in the many Romani media outlets that had sprung up after the revolution, as well as releasing their first individual books (e.g. Vlado Oláh, Elena Lacková, Tera Fabiánová, and František Demeter). These early books of Romani writing were important for the community’s self-awareness and confidence, but they left little mark on the mainstream publication market partly due to their low-budget design, and partly because the book market was swamped with newly available titles that had been banned under communism or published in exile.
This started to change around the millennium when well-established small and average-sized publishing houses such as Triáda, Argo, and G+G started to take an interest in authentic Romani voices and published their works in high-quality editions, thus bringing this niche literature to the attention of the mainstream readership for the first time. In 2005, Milena Hübschmannová, a non-Romani scholar whose support and assistance have been pivotal to the process of Romani nation-building, suddenly died, leaving the Romani writers, whose sole editor she was, bereaved and helpless.
The ensuing period of relative chaos and indecision brought about a change of paradigm: new writers have appeared independently of Hübschmannová and the Roma Studies department at Charles University, and the first generation either died out or learnt to fend for itself with the help of Hübschmannová’s disciples. The latter were the ones who established KHER in 2012. Initially, KHER was an online platform releasing short stories and novellas by Romani writers electronically and free of charge. In 2018, KHER published its first book in print, Ilona Ferková’s Ještě jedno, Lído! Kaštánkovy příběhy z herny (I’ll Have Another One, Lída! Kaštánek’s Stories from the Penny Arcade), and since then both the publishing house and Roma literature have been on the rise. KHER now publishes about five print books every year, hosts dozens of public readings, debates, and talks, participates in all major book festivals and trade fairs in the country, and continues to raise awareness of this thriving minority literature.
JS: How have your publications been received by critics and the reading public and how do you relate to or cooperate with other publishers, journals, and organisations who work with the Roma community and campaign for Roma rights?
RP: The way our first printed book by Ilona Ferková, published in 2018, found its way to readers was something of a missionary quest. At that time we didn’t have a sizable fan base, an e-shop, or access to regular distribution channels—Instagram was for us no more than a word—so we had to look for all kinds of other direct ways for the book to reach the public and for the author to receive some feedback. Since the response of the public, however small, and the first few reviews were very positive, we were able to build on this first modest success. Every one of the eleven books we have published so far has received positive reviews, and the number of our readers has grown with every new title. Their loyalty to our books not only demonstrates the success of the authors, but also opens up new prospects for us and gives us a sense of purpose.
Two years ago, encouraged by this success, we approached the acclaimed publishing house Paseka and proposed that we collaborate on the memoirs of Olga Fečová; the book, Den byl pro mě krátkej: Paměti hrdé Romky (Never Enough Time in the Day: Memoir of a Proud Romani Woman), was published last summer. Gradually we have seen further evidence that Roma literature is becoming recognized—nowadays most major media take notice of it, it is being discussed, and instead of calling its existence into question, its qualities are gaining increasing recognition; there is a demand for our books from both Romani and majority cultural organisations who include readings by our authors in their programmes. Whereas some years ago we had to fight for a place for Roma literature among all except our most loyal fans, we are now inundated with offers, to the point that we have to turn down some invitations.
JS: As you mentioned, the beginnings of Romani literature in Czechoslovakia are unthinkable without the pioneering work of the ethnographer and Romani scholar Milena Hübschmannová. Can you say a few words about this remarkable figure? Did either of you meet her personally or have a chance to work with her?
KR: Milena Hübschmannová (1933–2005), head of Roma Studies department at Prague’s Charles University, taught me between 1996 and 2002. Nothing I can say about her will do her justice, so I will offer a very subjective view: she had boundless energy, was the never-ending source of inspiring ideas which she learnt to delegate to others and thus managed more than she could have done single-handedly. She was hardworking, always curious, incredibly knowledgeable, had a very subtle sense of humour, and above all, an unparalleled love and understanding of the Romani people. She literally made us into who we are today. I can only hope that she will rest a little more easily when she sees the work that her students are doing in her footsteps and in her honour.
RP: I would have loved the opportunity to spend as much time with Milena as Karolína did, to absorb more of her energy, which continued to inspire the unique atmosphere of the department long after her death. Unfortunately, I was granted only one year. Nevertheless, from our first meeting during the oral entrance exam, I could feel what an extraordinary individual I was facing, someone whose kind and self-effacing demeanour never made you feel how far ahead of you she was in the field that she had so painstakingly founded. I remember her lessons on the Romani language; from the very first class she would speak to us only in Romani, and we were lost in the welter of expressive—though completely incomprehensible—language. However, when I hear the name Milena, the first thing I see is the silver showing in the parting of her straight raven black hair and the slightly elongated “O” sound in the word Roma, a pronunciation I had not come across before.
JS: The fact that Romani is not taught at schools must limit the number of people who opt to write in this language. The books published by KHER feature writing in Romani, Czech, some in Slovak, and some also in translation into or from Romani, illustrating the bilingual or even trilingual character of the culture. How do you work with the authors and do they themselves translate or rewrite their stories in the other language, or is that the work of someone else?
RP: You have put your finger on one of the many specific features of this literature to which there isn’t a single, all-purpose answer. In the early days of Romani writing, the authors wrote mostly in Romani, something that Milena Hübschmannová actively encouraged, as she realised how important written Romani was for the linguistic, cultural, and political emancipation of the Roma. All the authors, who were of a mature age, thus found themselves cast in the role of first-formers—they had to learn how to record their native tongue, which they had up until then used only orally, without the benefit of the necessary supporting apparatus such as textbooks, teachers, books, and so on.
For many of the authors writing today, Romani is still their main language of expression, and they often prefer to leave it to us to translate their works into Czech, a language that we are at home in. They are aware that Czech hasn’t sunk deep enough under their skin to enable them to render the atmosphere of their texts at a comparable level. At the same time, however, we see that the younger the authors, the more they rely solely on Czech. They may not have a sufficient command of Romani, or they don’t speak the language at all, as the years when the language was suppressed by communist authorities as well as the inadequate support in the present day have taken their toll. Or they simply don’t feel as confident writing in Romani. Some authors switch between the two languages depending on what they are writing about—Romani may be more suitable for certain topics, while something else may call for Czech. Writing in Romani also requires them to constantly search for appropriate words or phrases that don’t actually exist in this language, forcing the authors to seek other ways of expressing themselves. That can be quite challenging.
Of the 11 books we have published so far, only one is entirely in Czech. Seven are in Romani and Czech, one is translated into Czech from English and one from Swedish, and one is translated from Swedish and Kalderash into Czech and Romani.
JS: How do you deal with the formidable challenges of navigating two or three languages as editors and/or translators?
KR: Yes, that is often a challenge, but one that we have grown used to. Hours of work that most people won’t see go into the process of editing Romani texts. Different speakers use slightly different variants of the main dialect, North Central Romani, depending on where they grew up and what exactly their parents spoke. We discuss individual words and spellings not only with the writer themself, but also with other Romani speakers, and always with one or more editors who have a background in Romani studies. Our goal is to be truthful to the writers’ preferences, but also reader-friendly for other Romani speakers, thus establishing something of a norm, the beginning of standardisation. We know that the majority of our readers read the Czech version of our books, but we also know that many Romani parents read the Romani with their children and many non-Romani students of Romani practise their Romani through our pages, so it is never a waste of time to try and make the Romani version as comprehensive and as clear as possible. Sometimes, we also have to deal with Slovak, the vestiges of Hungarian, Romanian, and other contact languages, and occasionally we work with other Romani dialects, such as Kalderash. So it is never boring and we are constantly learning.
JS: In conclusion, what are your hopes for the future and what are you planning next, in terms of KHER publications and other activities, as well as your personal projects?
RP: We have to keep exploring the potential of Roma literature so that we are still here in the years to come. We have to do it for the sake of the authors for whom we make it easier to find their way to readers. For the sake of the reading public for whom these authors provide an opportunity to get to know how the Roma live, and for a new and different literary experience. And, last but not least, for the sake of our dream that keeps growing like a child—it’s just wonderful to make it happen.
Read Part II of this interview here!
Karolína Ryvolová (1977) graduated in Anglo-American and Romani studies at Charles University in Prague. She defended her dissertation, entitled Romany Letters in the Making: Testing the Frontiers of Legitimate Literature, in 2015. In her popularising articles, academic papers, translations, and through her editorial work and lectures, she has been consistently involved in the promotion of Romani writing as a major aspect of the international emancipation of the Roma. She works as a teacher of English, has translated several books by Anglophone Romani authors, and is an editor with KHER.
Radka Patočková (1981) graduated in journalism and Romani studies at Charles University in Prague. She has coordinated educational and literary projects organised by the NGO ROMEA, and has contributed to teaching materials on the history, language, and culture of the Roma for government officials and NGOs. In 2012 she co-founded KHER and has been its director since 2017. Since 2021 she has also been working at the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences on projects mapping the Romani Holocaust.
Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, (Czecho)Slovakia. Since 2008 she has been working as a freelance translator of fiction and non-fiction from Slovak, Czech, Polish, German and Russian. She is based in London and is Asymptote’s Editor-at-Large for Slovakia.
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