What's On at the Library

On Tuesday, October 29 at 6:30 pm, the Barbara Frum branch hosts an important lecture, From India to Europe: the Path of Roma History. This is the first in a two-part series entitled "The History and Persecution of the Roma People." The speakers are Julianna Beaudoin, an anthropologist from the University of Western Ontario, and Lynn Hutchinson Lee of the Roma Community Centre in Toronto. The second lecture, The Modern Persecution of the Roma People, takes place a week later on November 7 at the Bloor/Gladstone branch.

Migrations of the Roma people over the centuries.

Why are these events important? One only has to open a daily newspaper to see in graphic detail that the Roma people suffer from deep-going discrimination and legal persecution which in turn spawns real violence. Few could have missed the spectacle of a Roma couple in Greece being charged with the age-old anti-Roma fabrication of child theft simply because they had a blond and blue-eyed child. Unsurprisingly, the couple's assertion that the child's mother had left the girl in their care has been proven. A similar thing happened recently in Ireland, as detailed by Peter Stanford writing in the Daily Telegraph (reprinted in the Vancouver Province, 24 October):

"It was the blond hair and blue eyes of the seven-year-old taken by police from a traveller family at Tallaght, west of Dublin, that caused anonymous callers to the Irish police to suspect she had been kidnapped. Geneticists are clear that two paren'ts with jet-black hair are able to produce a blond child, if they have blond ancestors. How else to explain the number of blond, blue-eyed Sicilians?"

Paris, October 17. Thousands of students demonstrate in protest of the deportation of a Roma schoolgirl and her family. Banner reads "Education must be without borders." AP photo

And then there is Canada, where desperate Roma refugees are increasingly unable to find asylum and many have been deported back to Hungary and elsewhere. The Toronto Star (6 October) told the poignant story of how this has affected schools in Parkdale which had welcomed the influx of refugees that began in 2008. As the author Louise Brown writes:

"Who knew this wave of Roma students would reverse just four years later, emptying classrooms, laying off teachers and leaving a community heartsick at the loss?"

The current history is rooted in generations of exclustion and scapegoating. The lectures presented by the library are an opportunity to learn more about this history and about the Roma people.

Romani History in the Library

Toronto Public Library has many, many books about Roma history and they are easily found and borrowed.Search the collection using Romanies as a keyword. Narrow the results by adding other keywords such as History, Canada, Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, etc. If you need further assistance, ask any librarian. Romanies History locates more than 70 titles including classics like Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca.

A Beautiful Taste of Roma Music

We are also offering a taste of Roma culture with a wonderful musical performance at the Brentwood branch, Music by Julius C–the Gallery Duo. Julius Csoka and Robert Lakatos Roma will perform musical adaptations of Brahms, Liszt, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Tchaikovsky, as well as jazz greats like Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. This performance takes place on December 10 at 2 pm.