džulory ladžala

I know you don’t understand. I know that you think what you are posting and saying is not harmful, racist, or problematic.

However, as a real, live Gypsy (Rroma) I am here to tell you that all of the things you post ARE very problematic.

When I was a little girl, I was barred from four of the six shops in my town—because I was Rroma.

I was beaten almost every day walking home from school—by older kids, men, sometimes women, people who saw us would chase us off.

Those who were not Walking People (mostly Rroma, Pavee, or Kale) did not want to be my friend. They told me they would kill me if I set food on their property—believing the myths that I would curse them, steal something, or wantonly destroy their property.

My mother is gadže and always told me that she traded her real baby for me—a worthless gypsy. She always regretted marrying my father—she became stigmatized then—a gadže who marries a Rrom quite often is. Our Rroma family did not trust her, just as she (and her family) did not trust them. Even though, my great-grandmother married a Scottish Traveller and got herself kicked out of the family; even though my grandmother was raised in a closed community. My mother was raised completely outside the culture (as far as was possible where we lived—there were elements of it everywhere, including language).

It’s been constant, my whole life. No matter where I’ve lived. When I came to the US, I swore that I’d never utter the words gypsy or Rroma … but how can I stay silent about the things that make up my blood? My heart? My thoughts?

I miss my Kumpanija and Familija, yet at the same time I know that this move was necessary and my education and future have depended on it. I barely graduated high school. I failed out of college 4 times. No one cared, Rroma women don’t have a career. We get married; we have children; we make homes and be the mortar that keeps the walls of the familija together. I didn’t want to be the filler, I wanted to be the bricks. I wanted to mean something.

I’m so tired of gadže taking that away from me. 

All the photographs of half-naked women in fields, shorelines, tents, on horses all reinforce the sexualization of my people. We’re seen as slutty, easy, whores, prostitutes, only good for sex. It contributed to the reason I was raped. Twice. (I was neither drunk, nor wearing revealing clothing as people suggested later).

All the cheesy poems and longing dreams just reinforce the romanticization of a world that doesn’t exist.

My family was evicted several times.

My grandparents were illiterate. My father and mother (aunts uncles cousins) did not graduate high school. We’ve been beaten, barred, banned, attacked in every imaginable way… just as Rroma in Europe continue to be today.

We no longer live in tents, caravans, fields, or whatever unless we have no other choice. We are not (and never wanted to be) nomadic by choice. We are evicted from wherever we attempt to establish our homes.

You all profess that we are too angry; picking fights; being aggressive.

Sometimes, anger is all we have left.