| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
370 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm |
| Summary |
Recounts the author's early experiences as a fifteen-year-old Gypsy emigrating with her family from the Soviet Union to the United States. |
|
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 for his girls to 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 life on the ground. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in 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, one slice of processed cheese at a time. -- Cover, p. [4]. |
| Subject |
Marafioti, Oksana, 1974-
|
|
Romanies -- United States -- Biography.
|
|
Immigrants -- United States -- Biography.
|
|
Marafioti, Oksana, 1974- -- Childhood and youth.
|
|
Romanies -- Soviet Union -- Biography.
|
| ISBN |
9780374104078: $16.00 |
|
0374104077 |
|
