The Romani Gypsies - Yaron Matras

A book by a professor who has spent his career researching Roma language, culture and issues.  A well-written overview with chapters looking at history, common cultural aspects shared by the diverse communities, language and dialect, historical and contemporary challenges to survival both as a people and as a culture.
He brings up many of the difficulties around these issues:
- the diversity of communities from country to country and the difficulty of creating an inclusive identity
- the challenges of survival while at the same time avoiding integration and culture loss
- the myth of gypsies within the dominant societies and how this is both exploited by Rom and also how it works against them
- the ambivalence about school with its needed skills to be learned, but at the same time being apart from the strong family culture that both ensures identity and cultural continuity

The Death of Mr Lazarescu

A film from Romania.  Slow, gritty but somehow you get caught in the flow.  It simply recounts an Lazarescu's illness and the subsequent saga of the ambulance team's attempt to get Lazarescu into a hospital to get treatment (150 minutes!).  Perhaps a parable of the indifference and egocentrism of Romanian disctatorship?  Perhaps a parable of how this dictator experience destroyed Romanian social fabric?

Bury Me Standing - Isabel Fonseca

A personal documentary piece of writing about Roma in the various eastern European countries.  Fonseca lives with some families, does extensive interviews with others, and gets herself onto the inside of the lives the Roma lead.  Organized by country, which lets her examine subtle differences in how Roma are treated in different countries.  Mostly focused on current situations, as well as aspects of earlier 20th C history and how it has affected the various communities.

Some interesting ideas emerge:
1) It would seem Roma don't want to be integrated into European society generally.  They have a strong culture and set of values that have been maintained for centuries (many of the roots trace back to Indian society and caste structures) and want to keep them.  What they want is space to earn a living in a way suitable to them and a safe place to live without harassment and prejudice.

2) The industrial period has been very bad for them.  The various tribal groups seem to have had skills that were valued - such as metal work, basketwork, horse trading, various traditional skills - and which they used to make a living as they traveled from one town to the next.  Industrial production and modernization has essentially eliminated the need for these skills, and seems to have left many Roma with no way to earn a living.  It seems to me that there is a certain inability to adapt here as the world changes around you.  Traditional roles and values, a lack of understanding (perhaps) of the importance of education in today's working world, seem to work against resolving this problem of how to live.

3)  This idea of standing apart, of being a social group that only integrates so far - mostly for economic reasons - that keeps to itself apart socially and in marriage.  It would seem to be a threatening stance to majority social groups within a country.  Something similar could be said about aspects of Jewish society in Europe as well.  It creates group cohesion but it also puts you in a vulnerable position.  In a way, same could be said about Palestinians in Israel.

4) Traditional Rom  have a strong sense of contamination/purity and contact with certain thing can make you impure.  It seems to focus on what you put inside your body, or inside your house.  Some Rom won't eat outside the home for fear of ritual contamination.

A People Uncounted

A film about the Roma in Europe - some historical overview, but mostly focused on "The Great Devouring", as they call the Holocaust experience during the Nazi period.  Interviews with survivors of camps, of the Moldavian exile and starvation of Romanian Roma.  Lots of great interview footage with Roma activists and historians also.  An excellent film - moving, personal, yet includes some excellent critical examination and commentary.
A Canadian-made film.

Death's End - Cixin Liu

A long science fiction novel.  Not a bad read, but it is the fantastic technology and futuristic science that keeps the book going.  The character development is rather flat.  Lots of interesting ideas around future worlds and the nature of the universe.

Fleshmarket Close - Ian Rankin

Another good read by Rankin.  The issues explored in this book include immigration, exploitation of illegal immigrants, deportation and deportation centres/prisons; social and legal attitudes around rape and rape culture; corrupt business and ladder climbing in both corporate and public institutions.  Rebus is, in fact, an incarnation of what it means to be human - the contradictions and conflicts in choices around good and evil, helping and not helping, acting in the personal sphere as opposed to the statistical sphere.