Evenings with Polish Reporters IV: Romanies, or Gypsies?
- Where: Václav Havel Library, Ostrovní 13, Prague 110 00
- When: September 14, 2016, 19:00 – 21:00
In post-communist countries the Romany minority face constant discrimination and social exclusion. At the same time they are divided by disputes over their own identity, their traditional culture is subject to external interference and an educated Romany elite is only slowly emerging. The situation of the Roma in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and other European countries will be discussed by reporter Lidia Ostałowska and journalist and Roma Studies expert Saša Uhlová.
Another meeting in a joint discussion series held in cooperation with the Polish Institute in Prague in which we explore the phenomenon of the Polish school of literary reporting and its most notable contemporary representatives.
Lidia Ostałowska is the author of two books of reportage focused on the Roma, their culture, history and current situation. A Czech translation of the collection A Gypsy is a Gypsy (Cikán je Cikán, Dokořán a Jaroslava Jiskrová – Máj), in which the writer visits Romanies in north Bohemia, Bulgarian villages and Romanian ghettos was published this year. A second book, Water Colours (Akvarely pro Mengeleho, P3K 2014) returns to the forgotten Roma Holocaust and, against that backdrop, Romanies’ understanding of the past and the changing interpretation of European history.