
- 384 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
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,
American
Gypsy reveals how Marafioti adjusted to her new life in America, one slice of processed cheese at a time.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Author’s Note
- Contents
- American Cheese
- Bringing Down the Wall
- Crossfire
- Surviving America
- When in Doubt, Cook!
- Running Away
- War and Not So Much Peace
- Journal Number 1
- The Curbs of Beverly Hills
- A Premium Idea
- No Joan of Arc
- Honeylambshank
- Coffee Bean
- What Do You See?
- Cher and I Have Things in Common
- The Miss
- Blatnyak
- The Maverick
- At the Deli
- What’s in the Bag?
- Just Having Touched
- Mama Lola
- Viva Las Vegas
- Converting Sherri
- Black Magic
- Leaving Lexington
- Things Unseen
- To Magnet or Not to Magnet
- Exotic
- The Hunt
- Citizens of No-Land
- How Much for the Virgin?
- Endings and Beginnings
- Chasing Friendship
- On the Roof
- Kentucky Fried Chicken
- Where Olga’s Secret Is Revealed
- The Wedding
- Stevart Hopeland
- Comrade Pushkin
- Pavel
- Where I Finally Say It
- Signs
- Pieces of Me
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Copyright