A young roma girl's life told in an illustrated diary easy to buy. A present to defeat intolerance and really understand that the romas are human people, and not only less cleaned Aliens
Living as a nomad in a community where the majority of people thinks that you are a burglar, and everyone has fear to have deals with you, even looking you in your eyes.
A roma life in Italy is not the simple situation a person should desire to live in. Rebecca Covaciu explains it us in a detailed way in her book "Rebecca's Rainbow", edited by UR, a little Milanese editor.
UR choice to publish a roma's story is quite adequate. The book is the reprinting of Rebecca's personal diary, with a brief narration of her life.
Rebecca starts from Romania, where she has born, passing to Brazil, Argentina, Spain, France, again Romania and Italy, where her three son family moved some years ago.
Rebecca's everyday life is always the same. She has to obtain a top budget of money to help her family to pay dues and the rent of the house they choose to live in.
But Rebecca, in the contrary of other roma people, decided not to ask for money, but to earn money, selling the designs she paints.
Better to sell designs than ask for money? Not always in a town as Milan. Rebecca knows it very well.
As she describes in the book, once she has been beaten by a security man in a famous commercial centre near Milan's Duomo, when she tried to repair from a cold winter Milanese day, after having sell her designs all the day in the middle of the street.
The girl, probably because of her roma origins, is not a desired guest in such a high-fashion centre: after having beaten, the security man broke Rebecca's designs, and with them the money Rebecca could earn by selling her works.
The episode is just one of Rebecca story's chapter. In her book, the rainbow she paints in also a mix of happy colors, as the school director who allows her study in the Artistic Lyceum Boccioni - one of the best in Milan - even if she never ended the primary school.
Another Rebecca's Rainbow happy tonality is the one of the man who gave her as a present a crayon box, which Rebecca uses to paint, describing it as her special treasure.
Among Rebecca's Rainbow colors we can also read about the red of the fire, which the young author sees when the field she used to live in with other roma families is fired by a local population's attempt in Naples.
Rebecca's rainbow in not only a book. It's a way to reflect for us, the Europeans, who often look to roma people as less cleaned aliens who disturb our everyday life.
Reading Rebecca's Rainbow, the Europeans could remember that a rom is a person, with his culture and history. The way we have to act with this nomad culture is not the fear and the mental closure, but the dialogue and the cultural integration.
Of course, the legality is the most important thing we as Europeans must ensure, even facing those romas who effectively do not respect our national law. But it has not to be a preconception.
We have not the right to avoid any kind of dialogue, in order to trying to understand how could we help roma communities to live with us and, for first, to understand who romas really are.
Rebecca is a young girl who wanted and obtained to study in the Italian school.
She demonstrated that romas integration in Western society is possible, and that the ignorance is the strongest enemie she has to defeat when she tries to sell her designs in the market near Milan's Navigli.
We, the Europeans, could make something very important to help at the same time Rebecca, roma integration, and our western culture's progress: buy, give as a present, and read Rebecca's Rainbow.
Find it is very simple. It's necessary to send a mail to lademocraziaarancione@gmail.com to get in touch with the editor.
It will cost not so much, and it will be certainly help a cause we all have to fight as a sign of our civility.
Matteo Cazzulani
