In researching the American Romani in the 1940s, I discovered Mala’s people living in some very unlikely places. I had expected to find them mostly in urban centers like New York and Chicago, but soon came across evidence of Vlax and Romnichal Romani in rural areas such as North Carolina, the Appalachias, and Texas. It many ways, this makes sense – they first came to the United States in the 1600’s as slaves, and some of their descendants remained in these areas after slavery was abolished. I was fascinated by the idea that a culture that still seems so exotic and unusual has long been established in what we think of as “the heartland” of America. They were laborers in the Dust Bowl region, potters and horse breeders in Pennsylvania, people who lived by their wits and the skills they brought from Britain and Eastern Europe. Though I had originally planned to set some of the historical parts of the novel in a large city, I was drawn to the idea of a young woman like Mala in a vast landscape like post-Depression Texas, with its farms and ranches, empty spaces, and miles of open road.
Many Romnichals in Texas are now Evangelical Christians, a cultural shift I foreshadow in Chapter Thirty-Two of the book. Fewer Romani are continuing the established traditions of fortune-telling and arranged marriages, although these traditions – some hundreds of years old – still persist. Every year in various cities in Texas, the Romani tribunal, or
kris, takes place. The character of Mala was inspired when I heard a radio interview about the
kris, a kind of shadow judicial system with the power to penalize, or even banish, members of the Romani community. Into this secretive world, I put a headstrong girl with one foot in her new culture and one in the old, someone who could read and write, a thorn in the side of her clan. Unfortunately, her experiences as an outsider – of growing up in a culture without a country - continue to be lived by millions of Romani today, in the United States and around the world.
Thank you for reading Mala’s story!