Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey Review

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(More customer reviews)This book opens with a chapter on the great Romany poet, Papusza (born as Bronislawa Wajs), which appeared earlier in The New Yorker. As Fonseca tells us, Papusza wrote a long autobiographical ballad about hiding in the forests during World War II--"Bloody Tears: What We Went Through Under the Germans in Volhynia in the Years 43 and 44." Discovered by the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski in 1949, Papusza also wrote of the Jewish experience and "the vague threat of the gadjikane" (non-Gypsy) world." But her 1987 death in Poland, where she had lived most of her life, went unnoticed.
That is an appropriate beginning, for this book is not academic anthropology--and it more than admirably explains, from the Roma point of view, what it means to live in a world that remains largely threatening to the Roma. The book is not uniformly complimentary. But Fonseca lived for a period with Roma families, learned their separate and distinct Romany language, traveled across Eastern Europe with them, observed the poverty-stricken ghettos and mud hovels in which the poorest made their beds. And one finds in her closeness to them a sympathy altogether lacking in many other works.
Fonseca writes of her own extensive experience, of course, but also refers to more than 140 scholars, including the fine work of Rom professor Ian Hancock and Jan Yoors. The latter likewise lived among Roma, albeit during the pre-war and World War II eras. She recounts the likely path that the Roma traveled from India to Europe, their centuries of enslavement, their high rate of illiteracy (and cultural reasons for it), their experience during the Holocaust, which the Roma appropriately term the Devouring--and the new generation of Rom leaders who hope to lead their people to a more productive and accepted role in European and world society.
For anyone who has ever wondered about the Rom--especially those wanting a portrait that moves beyond the stereotypes of literature and music like Carmen--this is a fine place to begin. Alyssa A. Lappen

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Every Knee Shall Bow Review

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(More customer reviews)An excellent account of the shootout and standoff at Ruby Ridge that's all the more powerful because Jess Walter plays it straight down the middle, neither out to get the government nor out to belittle Randy Weaver. What we get instead is a sober laying out of the facts through great use of detail and a strong narrative. I went into the book a little skeptical and underinformed about Ruby Ridge and emerged horrified at what happened, particularly by the behavior of the feds. But Walter doesn't try to make Weaver a pure hero either, showing his eccentricities and willingly raising questions about his handling of the situation such as whether Weaver used his children as a buffer between himself and danger.The obligatory court section of the book is saved from the boring recitation of trial that often characterizes non-fiction, true crime books by an excellent portrait of lawyer Gerry Spence and very nice detail on the jury's lengthy deliberations.Walter ties Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City together very nicely without overdoing it. He's a master of understatement, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions. He includes a very good, concise history of the Aryan Nations/militia/freemen/patriot radical right-wing movement. This is a must-read for any student of the radical right-wing movement, especially anyone open-minded enough to be willing to accept that the government has made some horrific, perhaps criminal errors ... and that some of those errors have fanned the flames of hatred more effectively than any racist demagogue.

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What went wrong at Ruby Ridge? Why was Randy Weaver's son fatally shot in the back? How could the FBI justify shooting a woman as she held her infant child? Why were the Weavers given a $3.1 million settlement by the U.S. Government? Was there an FBI cover-up and how high did it go? Every Knee Shall Bow answers the critical questions that cut to the heart of the most explosive issues in the United States today. The Weaver Family took to the woods to escape what they believed was a sinful world on the brink of Armageddon. But Randy Weaver's indictment on a firearms violation escalated into a deadly shoot out at his northern Idaho cabin. Before it was over, a federal marshal, Weaver's wife and his only son were dead. Now, featuring exclusive interviews with key figures on both sides, Pulitzer Prize finalist Jess Walter objectively reconstructs all the riveting events in this controversial case.

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