Hedina Tahirović-Sijerčić - A Romani Womens Anthology

Copyright 2017 Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in Canada by

Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

210 Founders College, York University

4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3

Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax (416) 736-5765

Email:

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We also acknowlege the financial assistance of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

Note from the publisher: Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

Cover artwork: Monica Bodirsky, 14th Street, 2015, watercolour, ink, photograph, map, postcard, 9 x 11 inches. www.monicabodirsky.com .

Cover design: Val Fullard

eBook: tikaebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

A Romani womens anthology : spectrum of the blue water / edited by Hedina Tahirovi-Sijeri and Cynthia Levine-Rasky.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77133-401-3 (softcover). ISBN 978-1-77133-401-3 (softcover).

ISBN 978-1-77133-402-0 (epub). ISBN 978-1-77133-403-7 (Kindle).

ISBN 978-1-77133-404-4 (pdf)

1. Women, RomaniCanadaBiography. 2. Women, RomaniCanadaSocial conditions21st century. 3. CanadaBiography. I. Tahirovi-Sijeri, Hedina, 1960, editor II. Levine-Rasky, Cynthia, 1958, editor

DX125.S64 2017 305.891497 C2017-900326-7

C2017-900327-5

Printed and Bound in Canada.

A Romani Womens Anthology

Spectrum of the Blue Water

edited by

Hedina Tahirovi-Sijeri and Cynthia Levine-Rasky

INANNA Publications and Education Inc.

Toronto, Canada

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank all of the contributors who together created this unique and important volume attesting to the power and creativity of Canadian Romani women. Included in our circle of gratitude are the women whose images appear in Chad Evans Wyatts contribution to the book, RomaRising CA . Our respect for each otherin our pluralityis enduring.

At Inanna Publications, editor-in-chief Luciana Ricciutelli believed in the book from the start, advocated for it, and made it a reality. We acknowledge her invaluable support and assistance.

We express our gratitude to Ronald Lee for his consultation on Romani issues. We thank translators Suzan Searle and Peter Hajnal for their work on Sarah Barbieuxs and Tmea gnes Darczis chapters, respectively, and Mike Thoms for his transcription services. Monica Bodirsky is the visual artist who created the startlingly beautiful cover art for which we are much indebted.

We recognize the quality of our co-editorial partnership that is so robust that it makes our considerable physical distance irrelevant.

Finally, we thank our families and friends, especially our childrenEdis and Zerin Sijeri, and Adam and Elia Raskywithout whom nothing is possible and with whom everything is made meaningful.

INTRODUCTION

A SPECTRUM OF VOICES

CYNTHIA LEVINE-RASKY AND HEDINA TAHIROVI-SIJERI

THE POEM CV 6, by co-editor Hedina Tahirovi-Sijeri, and from which the title of this book comes, tells of the life, the death, and the afterlife of Mehmed, a Romani man. Denied dignity after death, Mehmeds soul seeks and finds peace in a vision of the sky replete with clouds, rain, and lightning. Journeying to India on a golden path, his soul dismounts from its horse and descends to the Ganges. While his horse returns to the spectrum of the blue sky, Mehmeds soul returns to the spectrum of the blue water. The title is a perfect reflection of Romani women in Canada. It is simple in naming a singular categoryblue watera ubiquitous, beautiful, and necessary thing. But it is also complex, summoning a multiplicitya spectruma thing that exists in tension with what on its watery surface appears to be a singularity. One need only look more closely at the blue waters surface to realize its depths. Mehmeds soul returns to its origins, a location identified by a legendary river that evokes a double meaning.

This book is a literary meeting place to which twenty authors do not return, but arrive for the first time. They do so both as a single categorywomenand as a multiplicity. An assemblage of elements without becoming a totality (Roffe), multiplicity preserves subjectively meaningful components of belonging to a group, but rejects an assumption of sameness in their quality.

There are many claims we can make about this book: it is the first of its kind in North America and maybe anywhere, in English; it embodies the multiplicity of Romani women with dynamic implications for the Roma peoples; it makes axiomatic the epistemic privilege of Romani women in which their critical insights are recognized as authoritative on the basis of their authentic and personal knowledge; it embraces the collaborative spirit of a group of friends and colleagues in a shared project of creativity; it collects an array of writing styles reflecting the panoply of womens voices made poignant for never having been heard together. The contributors who are not Roma count themselves as staunch allies in the struggle for Romani rights having enacted their commitment on the street, in their professional labour, and in cultural venues. In support of the directive that informs community empowerment, Khanchi pa amende bi-amengo (nothing about us without us), allies are aware of the ethics that flow from this orientation affecting our positionality, our identities, and the intersecting circuits of power and privilege in which we all move. We respect what Romani feminists Jelena Jovanovi, Angla Kcz, and Lidia Balogh acknowledge as the mutual exchange of knowledge and experiences that can occur between Romani and non-Romani women (11).

The book is a consummate collection of the work of twenty individualsMelaena Allen-Trottier, Sarah Barbieux, Julianna Beaudoin, Monica Bodirsky, Elizabeth Lisa Ann Csanyi, Gina Csanyi-Robah, Jennifer Danch, Tmea gnes Darczi, Arielle Dylan, Chad Evans Wyatt, Ildi Gulyas, Gyongyi Hamori, Lynn Hutchinson Lee, Delilah Lee, Cynthia Levine-Rasky, Julia Lovell, Viktoria Mohacsi, Hedina Tahirovi-Sijeri, Bluma Teram, and Saskia Tomkins. Most of the contributors have worked together in various ways, with some collaborations beginning years ago. Many of us continue to work together and commune together. We are twenty individuals, a multiplicity of friends. The authors are Romani women, women of mixed Romani heritage, and non-Romani allies. The book consists of a dynamic blend of life writing, creative work, research essays about identity, childhood, immigration, work, art, memory, love, spirituality, activism, advocacy, leadership, and other themes affecting the lives of Canadian Romani women. The sole male contributor, Chad Evans Wyatt contributes a selection from his international photography exhibit, RomaRising . Comprised of black and white portraits of Canadian Romani women taken in 2013 and 2014, Wyatts work puts faces to contributors words, conveying the multi-dimensionality of his subjects. Reflecting the diversity of womens voices, the chapters link everyday experience to a social critique of the factors that enable and constrain womens lives. It consolidates distinct expressions of agency and collectivity.