Čhávata z manéže - S romským rodinným cirkusem Amerikou třicátých let – Steele Gary G. (2023)

Ladies and gentlemen, applause for this book of hidden surprises. Though the small, delicate volume packed with hundreds of pages fits into a coat pocket, it contains a wealth of entertainment and insight. In the stories of a travelling Romani circus, circus performers, Romani people, wanderers, cowboys and Indigenous people meet: ordinary, socially marginalised people travelling through impoverished America in the 1930s and seeking ways to survive the long and difficult Great Depression together. At the Brewer family circus they find a home, fair treatment and a future, as well as guidance on how to remain human in even the hardest times. As a member of a Romani circus family, Gary G. Steele knows life in the ring firsthand. He understands the importance of solidarity, cohesion, self-sacrifice, respect for people and animals, and humour in the survival of a travelling community, while seeing these as universal values. He presents his family’s ability to endure difficult times with dignity as an inspiration for the present, when events including the war in Ukraine are stripping away our sense of automatic security and certainty. Travelling constantly to the next stop along bumpy roads, readers experience 1930s America not through the eyes of bankers and stock-market figures, but from the perspective of people who had to bear the burden of economic collapse. This unusual publication evokes popular reading filled with dramatic stories, songs and pasted-in pictures, while its pink colour recalls candyfloss at a fairground. Its distinctive graphic and artistic design also includes a glossary of the Para-Romani used in the book and authentic photographs of the author’s family in the circus, hand-pasted in the appropriate places by workers with disabilities from Prachatice’s KP Inva. As a result, every copy is a unique original.