Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey | 
|  | | | Title: | Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey | | Author: | Isabel Fonseca | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 29 October, 1996 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 067973743X / 9780679737438 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
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Product Description
Isabel Fonseca describes the four years she spent with Gypsies from Albania to Poland, listening to their stories, deciphering their taboos, and befriending their matriarchs, activists, and child prostitutes. A masterful work of personal reportage, this volume is also a vibrant portrait of a mysterious people and an essential document of a disappearing culture. 50 photos.
Amazon.com
They travel endlessly and seem to appear almost everywhere, yet they are the world's most mysterious people: Gypsies. Isabel Fonseca has done the impossible, entering into their world, living and traveling with Gypsies during several long trips to Eastern Europe, and she has brought back an insightful, highly personal, and very readable account of who the Gypsies are and how they live. The Gypsies have a legendary aversion to "gadje," or outsiders, but Fonseca has lifted the curtain and written gracefully about their lives on the edge of society.
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Customer Reviews:
• Bravo! 15 August, 2007
This book came highly recommended to me. Any book that aims at humanizing and demystifying the Roma people is a step in the right direction. I am a "white" American woman who has lived among the poorest of Gypsy people in the mountains of Romania. I can tell you from experience, these are a strong people, who have endured (and continue to endure) unimaginable hardships and prejudices. Many are unfairly shunned by society and go unrecognized by local governments. They are shoved to the side and forgotten. This book, "Bury Me Standing" is one of those books that everyone should read. You will be amazed at what you didn't know. You will be angry/sad/speechless as a result of what you find out. Read this book and then share it with others. It's a history that needs to be heard.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2O2PEZQ5CVVSZ
• Gypsy Road 12 May, 2007
Isabel Fonseca has written a cleared-eyed, well documented account of gyspies, focusing on those she visited in Eastern Europe. It is a higly readable, provocative narrative about a population ignored and abused, but with a defined culture that continues to survive at the edge of the modern world.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2SRMDA2LT1OWQ
• Bury Me Standing~the Plight Of The Roma 15 December, 2007
Great read for anyone truly interested in Roma studies or serious enough to get beyond the bias stereotypes of "Gypsy fortunetellers, beggers, tramps and thieves". This book goes way beyond scratching the surface of the socio-political and economic issues facing the Roma in Europe in the past and on a daily basis.
Isabella Fonseca relates her close and personal experiences among the Roma in various countries such as Poland, Romania, Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and some of the poorest countries of Europe. She also interviews many of the people she befriends and relates their experiences and treatment in the horrendous and unforgivable death camps of the Nazi's.
No glamory here, the STARK truth. It will educate, shock and disturb you!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A25PVKWFJNHMVI
• Journeys With Lonely Souls- A Letter To The Author 25 January, 2007
Dear Ms. Fonseca,
Ever since meeting a small group of real Gypsies in New Jersey, USA (they were visiting my church), I have found them interesting. When your book came out (Bury Me Standing) I did not have the time then to read it. That was a while ago, I admit (shame on me), but now that I am half of the way through your book. (Tah dah!) I have some observations and one or two questions!
My `personal' gypsies came to my church, which at the time was kind of unconventional- maybe as unconventional for Christians as Gypsies are for people....maybe that's why they came. We were meeting at a rented banquet room in a Holiday Inn in Paramus, New Jersey on Route 17, the heart of tacky American suburban bourgeois capitalism at its best. At the time my best friend, her teenaged daughter and I hung around together a lot. They were Greek - very Greek, which somewhat prepared me to meet my first Gypsies. (I am half Polish American. The rest of my ancestry is a conglomeration of peoples from Northern European countries, with the exception of Ireland). So there we were, Greeks, Poles and Gypsies. They stayed for the service, (maybe they prayed...maybe not) ...had coffee and cookies/cake with us and as far as I know did not steal anything. But they were colorful. Not in a clothing or makeup sort of way, but they stood out, ya know? They were like a giraffe in a herd of elephants. I seem to like people that are colorful and a bit, well...different.
So now that I am finally reading your book I am wondering...how did the Gypsies make you feel, interiorly, inside yourself, when you were there among them? Did you feel safe? Challenged? Was there anything magical or mystical about them or is that all a bunch of crap? (Excuse the French). I am personally involved to some extent with metaphysical pursuits, so this interests me. Did they have one particular religious persuasion and did they keep that separate from any personal/folkloric practices? Do you think they stole more than their wonderfully trustworthy neighbors? (Personally I think all people steal. Polish people steal- we are just not as clever about it as the Gypsies. Americans steal too- only when Americans do it we dress up in suits and sit at fancy desks, no?)
Anyway- some observations : I like your writing style. It is funny in a dry way sometimes, which I like , as my sense of humor is very dry (so I am told). If you did not intend to be comical I apologize. I especially like the paragraph about trying to kill the chicken in the bathtub. (Page 128) .I laughed out loud. It seemed like something my Greek girlfriend would try.
Also: I like your picture on the jacket cover of the book.. If I met you I think I would probably be afraid of you. You are pretty but look a bit tough. And sly. Maybe they rubbed off on you a little, huh? (And no, I am not a man, and not a lesbian either. I am just a regular suburban housewife/nurse with a certain boldness, I guess.)
I also liked all the pictures. Gave everything a sense of reality- that you were not discussing a bunch of Gypsies in caravans in a movie or in the past, but real people that are living now, and being mistreated now. Makes one very nervous. Frightened. Who's this going to happen to next? (I knew they were targeted by Hitler in WWII but did not know they were still singled out in hate crimes in our generation. I am active in the Wiccan movement in the USA, which is now quite out in the open...I am concerned that the furture may hold for us what is has held for the Gypsy- being outcast, unaccepted and always on the fringe, the edge. Always outside, not unified . Vulnerable and targeted.)
I am also wondering- why did you write about Gypsies? As a group in rather challenging geographical areas, it must have been dangerous for you to visit and chronicle them. I tried to figure this out from the sparse notes on the book but you are a mystery woman.
Well, that's it for now. Gotta get back to the book. More later....
January 16...Finally finished the book ! Hazzah! Very nice. I felt somewhat sad afterwards though. They have no unified voice, only weeping for their collective soul. Much misery and heartbreak. I will remember them forever now, each time I see a golden coin. Thank you for a very good read.
That was my letter to the author Ms. Fonseca- hope you enjoyed it!
Kore Gallagher, USA
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2B5JY232VA77R
• Bury Me Standing Review 30 December, 2007
I am gypsy. I have been severed from my heritage. This book gave me the reason behind my rhymes. The rituals of everyday life explained in this book are exactly the same as my own rituals, though I didn't know why I did them. I now know why, it's because I am gypsy and these are the gypsy ways.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3C92HAYPU0D6Y
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