American Gypsy

Gypsy: for many, the word evokes a picture of women in colorful, long skirts, their dark hair wrapped up in scarves, telling fortunes through a crystal ball while dark, swarthy men gamble at cards. For Oksana Marafioti, Gypsymeans her semi-dysfunctional family. For the first 15 years of her life, Marafioti's parents were part of a traveling ensemble run by her grandparents. Despite their talents, the Marafiotis endured prejudice for being gypsies. Hoping for a better life in the United States, the family emigrated from the Soviet Union, their knowledge of American society based on MTV videos.

Within months, Oksana's parents divorced, leaving her ill-prepared for a typical American high school and having to act as translator for her non-English-speaking mother. With honesty and humor, American Gypsy exposes the life of Marafioti's Roma kinfolk--from the constant fighting of her parents and her mother's drinking problems to her father's new business of conducting séances and exorcisms and her stepmother's gambling addictions. Throughout it all, Marafioti continues to search for her own identity. She discovers love in all the wrong places--but also discovers her own talents as a musician. Eventually, she gains a sense of pride in her ethnic background when a fellow student calls her "exotic," a word she adds as its own separate entry in her journal: "exotic--strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously unusual. Me." Rich in details, this memoir opens a window into the veiled and intense world of Marafioti's cultural heritage. --Lee E. Cart, freelance book reviewer