Our July Author: Oksana Marafioti and American Gypsy

This month we are reading Oksana Marafioti's American Gypsy about growing up Roma in Russia and Los Angeles. You can learn more about this young memoirist at her website, which includes a list of interviews and articles she has written. She looks like a fun Facebook follow, if you want to learn more about Romani culture, as well.  Here are some links I found useful:

The author stopped by our favorite bookstore, Vroman's, a little while ago and if you missed it you can experience her booktalk in the video above (also Part 2 and Part 3) even if the audio is a bit dodgy. She stopped by NPR's Talk of the Nation last summer to discuss the book and chat with Romani callers. And finally, I hadn't heard of the reality show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding before, but the author offers her opinion of the show in this Slate article.

More links on Roma culture and Amnesty International's concerns about the human rights of Romani people in the European Union later this week!

Coming Soon! Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

We are pleased to announce two opportunities to discuss Katherine Boo's award-winning book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity. Ye Olde Pasadena group has selected this book for it's usual September 15, 6:30pm meeting at Vroman's Bookstore. Loyal Reader Cheri Dellelo is launching a brand new Rights Readers in Cleveland on August 4 at 6:30pm at Mac's Backs. Let your friends in the area know!

For enticement to read the book, watch the video above.  Katherine Boo is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. For the last decade, she has divided her time between the United States and India. This is her first book.  Here are a couple of enthusiastic endorsements from other authors we have read:

“There is a lot to like about this book: the prodigious research that it is built on, distilled so expertly that we hardly notice how much we are being taught; the graceful and vivid prose that never calls attention to itself; and above all, the true and moving renderings of the people of the Mumbai slum called Annawadi. Garbage pickers and petty thieves, victims of gruesome injustice—Ms. Boo draws us into their lives, and they do not let us go. This is a superb book.”

—Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains and Strength in What Remains

“I couldn’t put Behind the Beautiful Forevers down even when I wanted to—when the misery, abuse and filth that Boo so elegantly and understatedly describes became almost overwhelming. Her book, situated in a slum on the edge of Mumbai’s international airport, is one of the most powerful indictments of economic inequality I’ve ever read. If Bollywood ever decides to do its own version of The Wire, this would be it.”

—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dime

Introducing Oksana Marafioti

Have you started our July discussion book, American Gypsy: A Memoir? Here's a brief video introduction from the author, Oksana Marafioti, to her story about growing up with her Roma and Armenian family in Russia and Los Angeles. It's light summer reading so you can easily get this one done for the discussion at Vroman's this Sunday!

Our June Author: Jennifer duBois

This month we are reading A Partial History of Lost Causes, Jennifer duBois' debut novel which links the story of a young woman diagnosed with Huntington's disease and a Russian chess champion turned politician. You can learn more about this young author, a 5 under 35 honoree, at her website. You'll find links to several interviews there, but I found the best supplement to my reading of this book was a series of articles duBois wrote for Powell's which deal with matters related to chess, gender, disease and Russian politics. At Bookish Habits, duBois explains her choice of differing perspectives for the two interwoven stories that form the narrative, and comments on Pussy Riot and her desire to trade places with Hilary Clinton. At Critics and Writers she discusses the research she did for the book, including watching chess games on YouTube and reading Rights Readers fave, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. At Numero Cinq, she talks about taking on Putin and the similarities between writing and chess.


For fun, check out DuBois' book recommendations here and here, a playlist to match the novel here, and she has fun casting a hypothetical movie version of the book here.

Finally, because the book's chessmaster turned dissident character is inspired by the very charismatic Garry Kasparov, here he is speaking to the Oslo Freedom Forum in 2010. Or, take a look at this 2007 Al Jazeera documentary (Pt 1, Pt 2) about Kasparov's turn to politics complete with his homage to Politkovskaya.

For August: Watcher in the Pine by Rebecca Pawel

Once again, we are kicking back in August and enjoying a mystery, this time one from Rebecca Pawel's series set in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, Watcher in the Pine:

Spain, 1940. Potes, a remote northern mountain village, is Carlos Tejada’s first independent Guardia Civil command. He soon discovers that this “promotion” is a mixed blessing. The villagers are unwelcoming. He and his pregnant wife, Elena, have no place to live but the jail, and his own men seem strangely hostile. Is it just their suspicion of his wife’s Republican sympathies? Or is there more going on in the beautiful but bleak area, recently devastated by the civil war? Tejada discovers that there may, indeed, be a new outbreak of that war with Potes as its epicenter. And he must find a way to reconcile his love for his wife with his duty.

Our May Author: David Treuer

Watch Writer David Treuer on PBS. See more from Tavis Smiley.

This month we are reading Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life by David Treuer. You can start to get to know the author at his website davidtreuer.com. Here are a few more tips:

The 12 minute video above serves as a good intro to the book. You can also listen to Treuer discuss the book on Talk of the Nation and while you are on the NPR site follow-up with this 2008 Fresh Air interview with this brother Anton about Ojibwe language preservation, a favorite topic here at Rights Readers.  Slate also has a good audio interview about the book plus  a series he wrote in 2009 about Indian casinos.

In this Los Angeles Review of Books interview, Treuer talks about the book's balance of memoir, journalism and history, and fiction vs. nonfiction,

A lot of my fiction was trying to destabilize our thinking about Native people. The confidence with which people said we meant this or that. I wanted to wreck that confidence (with my novels). But with Rez Life I wanted to see what a good hard look at power would do to our ideas. Why do reservations exist? Why do we have casinos? When exactly did that happen? Why? Where and when did boarding schools exist? Why are there so many Indian kids not living with their parents? What do reservations mean? How did they get to be the way they are? So the nonfictionness of Rez Lifeis meant to help answer those questions. What can we see if we look closely? What can we see if we look carefully? What happens when I strip away all surface style? What happens to our vision then? Ironically — I think we see much more of the plurality, the multiplicity, the fecundity, the sheer range of Indian life. It isn’t one thing. Or two things. Indian life is blessedly diverse and complex and vibrant. That’s what life is after all — multiplying forms. And that, above all, is what I was trying to show: life gets bigger the more you look at it, the more you live it.

Our resident language geeks might want to check out this 2009 On Being story and this essay in the Washington Post. And from the NYT, here are some tips from Treuer on planning your canoe trip in Ojibwe country.

Finally, if you're curious about Treuer's fiction, you can get a taste from this reading. It had me intrigued!

For July: American Gypsy by Oksana Marafioti

For July, we have selected American Gypsy: A Memoir by Oksana Marafioti, 

Fifteen-year-old Oksana Marafioti is a Gypsy. This means touring with the family band from the Mongolian deserts to the Siberian tundra. It means getting your hair cut in “the Lioness.” It also means enduring sneering racism from every segment of Soviet society. Her father is determined that his girls lead a better, freer life. In America! Also, he wants to play guitar with B. B. King. And cure cancer with his personal magnetism. All of this he confides to the woman at the American embassy, who inexplicably allows the family entry. Soon they are living on the sketchier side of Hollywood. 

What little Oksana and her sister, Roxy, know of the United States they’ve learned from MTV, subcategory George Michael. It doesn’t quite prepare them for the challenges of immigration. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in the motels really free? How do you protect your nice new boyfriend from your opinionated father, who wants you to marry decently, within the clan? 

In this affecting, hilarious memoir, Marafioti cracks open the secretive world of the Roma and brings the absurdities, miscommunications, and unpredictable victories of the immigrant experience to life. With unsentimentally perfect pitch, American Gypsy reveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.