American Gypsy A Memoir [Paperback]

A vivid and funny memoir about growing up Gypsy and becoming American

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 that his girls 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 the challenges of immigration. Why are the glamorous Kraft Singles individually wrapped? Are the little soaps in the 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,AmericanGypsyreveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.

Oksana Marafiotimoved from the Soviet Union when she was fifteen years old. Trained as a classical pianist, she has also worked as a cinematographer.

Engaging. . . Marafioti describes withhumor and introspectionhow the self-described Split Nationality Disorder' she experienced growing up only magnified upon her family's emigration from the former Soviet Union to Los Angeles when she was 15 . . . Marafioti'sprobingobservation of the contrast of American individualism with flCt