Romani author Gary G. Steele: Change is the only certainty there is in life

As Gary G. Steele (*1943) writes in the preface, for a man born into such a background he went on to have an unusual professional career. Among other things he graduated from university, served in the Peace Corps in the West African country of Niger, taught at a college, and worked for international consulting firms focused on distributing contraceptives, pharmaceuticals and vaccines to urban and rural excluded localities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“I feel that my childhood with the circus equipped me with skills such as flexibility, problem solving and intercultural understanding which enabled me to pursue a career later. I have never forgotten who I am and where I come from,” he told Romano voďi magazine.

Q: I’ve read your voluminous book seven times as a translation editor and had a great time each time. I’m really pleased to meet you in person. Mr. Steele, is this your first time in Prague?

A: Thank you for the compliment. Yes, this is my first time in the Czech Republic. We are traveling in Europe, and Prague is the most important destination for us. I am happy for the opportunity to promote the book that was published here. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know many Czechs in the few days I’ve been here. The hotel staff is Tunisian, the guests are Italian, the drivers are Ukrainian… Prague is very cosmopolitan. I am happy that I was able to attend the concerts of the Khamoro festival and also to meet Romani authors.

Q: How was that experience?

A: It was amazing. I think it took only five or ten minutes to reach an understanding with the others… I learned a lot from them. I was impressed by their interest in writing. I don’t know any other Romani authors who write about Romani culture. Usually only university professors write about it. We [Roma], of course, have a wonderful tradition of passing on stories orally. The problem is that the stories can die with those who experienced them or heard them if they are not passed on to the next generation.

Q: Romani people often mention that when they travel and meet Roma in another country, they feel a sense of belonging. Did you feel it here as well?

A: Mostly yes. When I meet a Romani violinist on the street, whether that’s in Colombia, Spain or Italy, I always stop to greet him. In England, where my great-grandparents came from, I have yet to meet a Romanichal I’m not related to, however distantly. We always run into the same surnames like Wharton, Cooper… I think there are about 20 surnames which are found among English Romanichals. I often get asked strange questions in conversation, like why I live in the US and not England where my ancestors came from. They also wonder if I do anything differently from the traditional Romanichals. Well, times change…

Q: In your book, too, the characters talk about change, for example, when the older generation lectures the younger one that there is no point in resisting change, they must prepare for it.

A: Yes, I write about change being the only certainty we have in life. It can be good or bad. After the crisis of the 1930s, no one knew that something worse was coming – the Second World War. Then there are the good things that change the world for the better. For example, vaccinations, now highly widespread even in developing countries, have made diseases like polio virtually extinct. Contraception, educational opportunities, the role of women today…

Q: You’ve travelled the world, would you say there is such a thing as national character? Americans, for example, are said to have a positive approach to life.

A: Not everybody in America is positive, on the contrary, I’d say it’s gotten a lot worse recently as society has become more and more polarized, especially now before the presidential election. We’re not very happy right now. I don’t believe in national character, which could be a dangerous thing to say. But yes, I can say that there are habits or characteristics that people from a certain country often have in common, quite a lot. For example, some say the people are much more sociable in the south. In Morocco, for example, men give each other strong hugs. I once even got my sunglasses, which I had tucked in my breast pocket, broken in such a hug. Then there are countries where people won’t hardly even shake your hand. As far as these other ideas about Americans, the thing that always surprised me the most was that in certain countries, people expected the US to have the answers to the world. I always commented that they have to find their own solution that suits them, their culture and their society.

Q: But the United States determines world events to a large extent, including European events. Do the people in the US realize this responsibility?

A: American society is also divided on this issue. When I meet someone wearing a red [MAGA] cap, I may have trouble communicating with them because they don’t want to hear what I have to say, my opinions. Politics has become like a football field. People are doing exactly what football fans do who love their team regardless of whether it’s any good or not. Plus there are a lot of uninformed people in America. I’ll give an example: Just because you want to stop the violence in Gaza doesn’t mean you’re an antisemite. But some people don’t want to know too many details. Unfortunately, even the media, which is supposed to report objectively, often succumbs to polarization and distorts events.

Q: Do you see any hope for change?

A: It would be enough for me if the situation stabilized, but there is still the problem of low information. Most Americans couldn’t find Ukraine on a map, and then there’s a minority of people like me who realize the gravity of the situation and worry that Putin won’t stop in Ukraine, that this is just the first bite for him. After the conquest of Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltic countries will be next and even the Czech Republic might not be spared, in my opinion. But we’ve come too far from writing books now, I’m not an expert on European affairs.

Q: So let’s go back to literature. How did you write a novel set almost a hundred years ago?

A: I drew on the stories that were told in my family. I have shoeboxes and albums where I keep my family photographs, they were a great help. They brought back my memories. Even details like the fact that at one time we had four specially-trained horses. I used Google to check historical facts, for example, what years the dust storms were, or how high the unemployment rate was. For example, I set a particular bridge in a different city than the one where my ancestors told me it actually was, but those are details that don’t matter. I think art should broaden people’s horizons and entertain them at the same time. You can’t have one without the other. You have to tell the story in a way that engages the reader, then a person who reads a novel about the Roma might say that they are creative, hard-working people. We have a duty to pass on these stories from our past.

Q: Yes, you don’t read about everyday experiences in encyclopaedias…

A: They’re absolutely irreplaceable. Like the fact that during the Depression, sometimes sandwiches only had one piece of bread, or that when a bicycle tire burst, there was no way to fix it because there might be nothing to fix it with. I also captured my own personal experiences, the prototype for the character of Gilly is partly me and partly my brother. As for the other members of my family, as characters in the novel I portrayed them in a better light than they always were in real life. I was lenient with them, one should be lenient… Besides we [Roma] are often criticized unfairly, so I compensated for that a little.

Q: The publication of the book was in a way your “coming out”, a public declaration of your commitment to the Romani minority. What kind of reactions did you get? Did it confirm that your novel reduces prejudice?

A: By publishing this novel, I put my Romani skin in the game. Sometimes I get reactions that indicate a low level of awareness, such as people saying “I’m also a ‘Gypsy’ because I like to travel and have a free spirit.” – “I didn’t know ‘Gypsies’ were real people.” Or “But you’re not a real ‘Gypsy’, you live in a house.” My close friends have always known about my Romani heritage, and I think that origin, in and of itself, doesn’t say anything fundamental about a person, you can tell who they are by how they treat others.

The main message of the book was to tell the reader that we Romani people are here, that we are good people, and that this is how people should perceive us. It’s time for a change. Another example of positive change is that many years ago, it was also not common for women to work at all, or to get a higher position, for example as a journalist, to work in most professions at all, even if they worked very hard on themselves, but now it’s quite commonplace. After all, we live in the 21st century. My mother didn’t go to school a single year, she learned to read and write from her father, but I have a master’s degree.

Q: That’s quite an advance. How did you get an education with that background?

A: My father had German roots. He sent me to a boarding school run by nuns. I learned well, my desire was to prove to everyone around me that the Roma were good people. There were terrible rumors about us at the time. For example, it was said that we were thieves, kidnapped children, didn’t bathe, etc., so we had to hide our origins. The Roma were uneducated, that is, they had no institutional education, but as I show in my book, this did not necessarily mean that they had to be poor; on the contrary, they [we] were often skilled businesspeople.

Q: Are you in contact with your Romani relatives? Are any of the descendants of the circus operators still in that business, and do you still hold “end of season” gatherings together?

A: Thanks to social media, I am in contact with them. I’m a member of 14 groups on Facebook alone, and through that I’ve met cousins I had no idea about. The last member of our family who rode with the circus passed away eight years ago. One of the bears from that circus is still alive, and so are the horses, grazing in Texas. Some of my relatives are musicians, some lay asphalt, and some tell fortunes.

Q: You majored in the humanities, focusing on languages and literature, but you worked in a completely different field. When did you decide to write a novel?

A: I started writing after I retired, I needed something to do, I didn’t want to pack it in just yet. [laughs] I also still felt that I had a duty to tell our Romani stories. For centuries, we’ve just passed them on orally, so we have no trouble telling them, but sometimes we’re not sure if we can capture them correctly in a text. There are many inspiring ideas for people who want to write in Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, such as the idea that “there is no one right way to write a book”. Just start writing and don’t look at what anyone says is the “right” way to write. It’s like learning to ride a bike – you learn to write again just by writing. Literary creation is the art of rewriting and rewriting some more. You have to figure out what type of plot or conflict is closest to you, and that’s what you want to describe. English literature professors divide these into three types of conflict: conflict with the world (such as war, disease, natural disasters), conflict with another person, and conflict with oneself. The fourth type can be some combination of the first three types, where these conflicts clash and encounter each other. I don’t like to write about conflicts between people; I prefer to write about the clash of the individual with the world, as was the case in the Great Depression.

Q: What else does an aspiring author have to reckon with?

A: Writing takes a lot of time. If you tell yourself you’re going to write a book in a year, you have to prepare yourself for the amount of work it will be, as if you were employed part-time to spend that time writing. You also have to realize that most of the books people talk about writing have never been written, most of the ones that someone eventually starts writing have never been finished, and most of the ones that are finished have never been published. It’s sad, but it’s true.

Q: How difficult was it to get The Gypsy Family Circus of 1933: Stories from a Long-Gone Era published?

I queried 15 different publishers. I wrote to those interested in the circus milieu, ethnic minorities, or the Depression era of the 1930s. Five or six replied that these were wonderful stories, but unfortunately they wouldn’t publish them. Of the books published in the US, the vast majority are romances, thrillers, self-help manuals, children’s literature and cookbooks. Where is there room for our writing in such a competitive environment? My wife Joanne, who is my first reader, editor and agent, discovered that it was possible to self-publish a book on Amazon. You determine what the book will look like from a menu of paper sizes and types, fonts, illustrations, covers, etc. Amazon will print and deliver your order and then offer it on its website. This is how anybody can publish nowadays, but it still doesn’t mean anyone will buy the book, you have to take care of the promotion yourself.

Q: How do Roma live in America today?

We are a very small minority and our Romani language is already very influenced by English. We came from and still do come from different countries, there are Manouche, Sinti, Russian Roma, Polish Roma, Greek Roma, or those who came from Brazil and the Caribbean. They make their living in different ways, paving driveways, for example, and some Romani women use henna to decorate people’s hands at fairs and markets. Not all Roma are traditional, and I am one of them. Excluded Roma neighborhoods do not exist much in America, but in South Carolina, for example, some Roma like to live concentrated in caravan sites. As in the case of my Romanichal family, we all keep in touch through social media, and some of us attend certain churches together, but I’m not sure if it’s for religious or social reasons, or a bit of both.

Q: What will be the future of the Roma?

A: Looking back in history, my ancestors moved between the north and south of England depending on the season and made a living in many ways, such as being performers, sharpening knives, repairing crockery, horse trading, music. When we came across Roma from Eastern Europe in America, we were jealous of them because they had nicer jewelry and carpets. At Khamoro I went to see the parade of Romani dancers and musicians in the center of Prague, and I talked to dancers from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovakia. It was painful for me to hear how some of the Roma from these countries are just surviving, writhing in the vicious circle of poverty. Yet today, more than at any time in the past, Romani men and women also have the opportunity to succeed, even in technical and scientific fields. My niece, who has a PhD in microbiology, is proof of this. I believe that the way to change is through education. That’s our future.

In England, there used to be very little or no intermarriage between the majority and the Roma, but it’s quite common now. What our future is, I don’t know, maybe full or partial assimilation, but I think if we came to England 500 years ago and to America 150 years ago and we’re still here now, then it’s quite likely we’ll continue to be here in some way.

*Mr. Steele has published three collections, The Gypsy Family Circus of 1933: Stories from a Long-Gone Era, The Gypsy Family Circus of 1934: More Stories from a Long-Gone Era, and The Gypsy Family Circus of 1935: Stories & Surprises for Another Season. The Czech translation is of the first collection.

Interpretation during the interview: Jana Donovan

First published in Romano voďi magazine.