Picking up from yesterday’s interview with Radka Patočková and Karolína Ryvolová on the founding of KHER, the only independent publishing house in the Czech Republic to spotlight Roma literature, today we delve further into Roma literature and identity—its history, notable figures, and ethos—with interviewer and Asymptote Editor-at-Large Julia Sherwood.
Julia Sherwood: What are the main themes, genres, and stylistic features of Czech and Slovak Romani literature?
Karolína Ryvolová (KR): Although the themes have naturally changed over time, the dominant feature and vessel of Romani stories continues to be memory. The writers relate their private histories in different contexts (persecution during World War II, post-war migration, successful pre-1989 integration followed by the tempestuous nineties, and so forth) and in that way contribute to the history of their community, which is still largely ignored by mainstream works of history. An important minority stream is feminist topics, pertaining to the traditionally subordinate role of the Romani woman as opposed to her ambitions and dreams, pioneered by Tera Fabiánová in 1970 and since successfully elaborated on by such writers as Ilona Ferková, Irena Eliášová, Erika Olahová, and Iveta Kokyová. The dynamics of the mutual Romani and non-Romani relationships in society is another regularly recurring theme. Most recently, we have seen the emergence of LGBTQ+ themes in Roma literature and interesting attempts at a complete divorce from ethnic narratives and issues.
JS: Traditionally, Romani culture has been predominantly oral––a good example is Elena Lacková’s memoir, Narodila jsem se pod šťastnou hvězdou (published in English as A False Dawn: My life as a Gypsy woman in Slovakia), which was recorded by Milena Hübschmannová (Czech scholar and founder of Romani studies, who is discussed in greater detail in the first interview). Lacková’s life story, providing an insight into the history and the tough realities of growing up and living as a Roma in twentieth-century Slovakia, also demonstrates the close historical links between Czech and Slovak Roma. Yet it wasn’t until 2022 that the book appeared in Slovak, translated by Júlia Choleva Vrábľová and published by BRaK (see Asymptote’s interview with publisher František Malík). What do you think is the reason for this late reception in the country of its author’s birth?
KR: I have no definite answer. On the one hand, I believe that until recently, most Slovaks have been able to read in Czech and vice versa, with reference to the more than seventy years of joint Czechoslovak history, so a Slovak translation has not been necessary. On the other, it seems from what we are hearing from our Slovak colleagues that the field of Slovak Romani literature is still quite scattered, distributed in fairly isolated hubs such as Nitra, Banská Bystrica, Košice, and Prešov, and it is perhaps not easy to develop a joint initiative in support of one of their classics. While Romani is much more widely spoken and present in Slovakia than in Czechia, there is at present no organisation with the visibility and impact of the likes of KHER in Slovakia. However, Alexander Mušinka from Prešov University has been working on rectifying this oversight. In 2021, he released the first volume of a monograph on Lacková, prefaced by a well-researched biographical paper that showed the breadth of the many years of her journalism for the Slovak Romani magazine Romano nevo ľil.
JS: A seminal event that shaped the recent history of the Czechs and Slovaks was the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The hopes of an end to political oppression and racial segregation raised by the Velvet Revolution were, however, soon dashed for the Roma, as segregation in education and many other discriminatory policies and attitudes continued unabated.
The Roma community became the target of violent racist attacks, resulting in a wave of emigration of Czech and Slovak Roma in the late 1990s (there were half a dozen Czech Roma children in my daughter’s primary school in London at the time). Not all of those who left, however, did so voluntarily, with many young Roma women becoming victims of human trafficking.
One of them, Eliška Tanzer, who was forced into prostitution by her own family as a teenager, has managed to rebuild her life in the UK and describe her experiences in a successful memoir, The Girl from Nowhere, which has also been translated into Slovak and Czech as Vyrostla jsem v ghettu. The Czech edition was translated by another press, and I wonder how you see this book fitting into the Roma literature you have championed?
KR: Although I regard every Romani voice telling their story from their own perspective as a valuable contribution to the growing body of Romani letters, I had many misgivings while reading Eliška Tanzer’s account. They should be viewed as one reader’s/editor’s notes only and NOT as a generally shared perception.
First and foremost, the writer has adopted the Anglo-American approach to narrative from her creative writing course and it has little relevance to the setting, the community, or the Romani oral tradition. I wonder if her words would ring more true if she chose another mode of story-telling.
Secondly, I do not recognize the setting. The ghetto of her story is so unfamiliar that it might as well be in South Africa, or anywhere. I understand the need for anonymization, but readers familiar with the reality of Slovak Romani ghettos will be perplexed to the point of disbelief.
Thirdly, Tanzer’s book is a painful, detailed, and clinical description of a shocking life story, but as a reader I am at a loss as to what the protagonists’ feelings were, how she processed all the horrors emotionally, what she made of her experience. I am afraid that, in its current form, the book is more of a tabloid shock-horror story for majority readers than the result of a need to make sense of someone’s personal trauma. As such, it doesn’t serve the community well. The characters are two-dimensional and feed into negative stereotypes about the Roma. While I have nothing but the most profound respect for the writer’s courage in coming out and talking openly about what has happened to her, I feel that the book has failed in its most important mission, that is, to evoke sympathy and understanding from a majority, mainstream readership.
Interestingly, no fiction published in Czech or Romani by KHER carries these signs of a colonised mind. The accounts may be briefer, more elementary, but their message is usually heartfelt and peaceable. I would like to believe it is partly thanks to the fact that our publishing house makes no demands on the writers’ success, financial or otherwise. Our mission is to allow Roma to speak for themselves, and we help them do it as best they can, but we do not need their books to appeal to the popular mind. It would be interesting to find out how much of Radek Banga’s scandalous memoir (Ne)pošli to dál; (Don’t) Pass It On) with its allegations of childhood abuse was dictated by similar considerations and the anticipation of mainstream readers’ taste.
JS: The experience of those who did not emigrate, their disillusionment as well as resilience in the face of the post-1989 developments, are on full display in the collection Samet blues, published by KHER in 2021. Can you introduce this book and its genesis to Asymptote’s readers?
Radka Patočková (RP): This is a rather extraordinary project in the context of our books, a polyphonic testimony to the first years of a free Czechoslovakia (soon to be only the Czech Republic) from the perspective of Roma authors who have lived through this turbulent, dynamic, amazing but in many respects brutal, period as children, teenagers, or grown-up parents. Our original idea was to publish a collection of stories looking back over the entire twentieth century, conceived as a single book. However, we received a great many texts from authors who felt the need to come to terms with the 1990s, and it made us realise that writing that reflects so much disillusionment, scars on the soul as well as hopes that were not disappointed, deserves a separate publication. We felt that such a courageous roar directed at unsuspecting society just couldn’t be subsumed within the covers of a book that deals with a much larger time span.
JS: How does the complex linguistic situation of Roma literature—at the intersection of Romani, Czech, and Slovak—impact the process of writing and the quality of the finished works? Do you think it’s fair to apply the same critical criteria to literature that is only emerging and that is being created in conditions quite different from the mainstream?
KR: You have more or less answered your own question. The point of departure for Romani writers is eons away from that of Czech writers. They are writing because they feel the need to, often to fulfil a sense of historic responsibility, to boost their community’s confidence and to preserve what is left of traditional Romani culture as they remember it. They are doing this with limited tools, overcoming shyness and insecurity, knowing that they will be judged both by the non-Roma for their inadequate educational background, and by the Roma for not using “the right” Romani, or even for standing out of the crowd. “Romani Literature” is a work in progress. It is real and plays a not inconsiderable role in contemporary Romas’ self-awareness, but it is also being shaped as we speak, in real time. Its value is as much symbolic as aesthetic and factual.
JS: Karolína, to come back to your book Špačkem tužky na manžetě (In Pencil, on the Cuff. The Story of the Literature of the Roma People), in his review for the Romani journal Romano voďi, Stanislav Daniel said that it raises the question of what can really be regarded as Roma literature—is it literature written in Romani, even sci-fi that doesn’t feature any Roma or, literally, any texts written by Roma, even in Czech? How would you and Radka answer this question?
KR: The question Daniel has posed is legitimate and frequently discussed among scholars dealing with Romani writing. I chose to avoid it in my book as I felt it would muddy the waters for the common reader, but I paid plenty of attention to it in my dissertation. For me and many other commentators, it is not a flawless Romani “pedigree,” Romani as the language of production, or Romani subject matter that qualifies a writer as part of Romani literature, but rather their identification as Roma. That in itself is a sign of a willingness to speak on behalf of the community and make points that all Roma can relate to on some level. Romani literature—a good example of minority literature in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense—is always political and never only individual. It is also worth pointing out that, due to the vast linguistic and cultural differentiation of the different bodies of Romani writing in different countries, it is now generally recognized that we are speaking of Romani literatures in the plural.
RP: An additional difficulty in giving an unambiguous answer to this question is that some authors find it normal and are happy to be called Roma authors; they are proud of it and regard it as a sign of being unique, something that may be helpful to them while they use it to try to effect some change in society. On the other hand, there are some who find it constricting and are concerned that it will determine the way their works will be read.
It is also worth mentioning how and why the label is used by those on the other side—i.e. publishers, journalists, and so on. For us, it is a natural and integral part of our work to present the authors we publish as Roma; it’s what we do by definition, so to speak. But I am aware that some publishers may use the label Romani as a marketing brand, something that inevitably stirs a variety of emotions in Czech society.
JS: In his book Skutečná cesta ven (The Real Way Out, 2022) writer, journalist and musician Patrik Banga, who contributed to Samet blues, depicts the harsh realities of growing up in a Roma community in Prague in the 1990s. In a recent interview, he cited examples of racism and racial profiling that sound uncannily similar to the kind of experience people of colour have had in the United States and the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, he said he did not want to be viewed solely through an ethnic lens and insisted: “I am not a Roma author, I’m simply an author.” Are there any Roma authors who have accomplished this, and do you think it is realistic to think that this goal may be achieved anytime soon?
RP: Maybe if the majority society did not see the Roma in a negative light, authors would not mind being referred to as “Romani” because there would not be a reason to use this in a positive or negative sense. To me, a variety of possible identities is something that is attractive, an invitation to explore other territories, but if I were a Romani author in Czech society I might also feel the need to be seen primarily as a human being. I doubt that Czech society will get there in the near future—simply because, among the Roma you won’t find two people who are the same. So, as long as one in a thousand has a problem with being labelled in this way or another finds it desirable, all these different voices must be respected. The Roma will be whoever each of them individually chooses to be.
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 popularizing 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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