Daughter of printmakers and painters – an English Romany father and Scottish-English-Irish mother – Lynn Hutchinson Lee is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Lynn spent her childhood summers in a forest surrounded by marshes and bogs, and their lush beauty and magic haunt her writing. She was first place winner of the 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction. Her writing is published in Room; Weird Horror; Northern Nights; KIN: An Anthology of Poetry, Story and Art by Women from Romani, Traveller and Nomadic Communities; Prairie Fire’s 50 Over 50; Wagtail: The Romani Women’s Poetry Anthology; Guernica’s This Will Only Take a Minute (winning the Editor’s Choice Award); and elsewhere. She is co-editor of Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia (Exile Editions). Following her novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, her novel Nightshade, shortlisted for the Guernica Prize, will be released by Assembly Press in 2026.
No major spoilers about Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens, but we do discuss the plot at length from 26 mins-45 mins.
Romani crushes for this episode are Mihaela Drăgan of Giuvlipen and the late and great Ronald Lee.
Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.
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Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens
Conceived of by Paulina Stevens
Edited by Viktor Pachas
With Music by Viktor Pachas
And Artwork by Elijah Vardo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome to Romanistan .
Speaker 3 (00:10):
We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Paulina.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
And I'm Jez.
And today we are so excited totalk to Lynn Hutchinson Lee
about her debut novella, Originsof Desire and Orchid Femme.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Daughter of printmakers and painters, an
English Romani father andScottish English, irish mother,
lynn Hutchinson Lee is amultidisciplinary artist and
writer based in Toronto, canada.
Lynn spent her childhoodsummers in a forest, surrounded
by marshes and bogs, and theirlush beauty and magic haunt her
(00:48):
writing.
She was first place winner ofthe 2022 Kagawa Award for
Fiction.
Her writing is published inRoom Weird Horror.
Northern Lights Kin, ananthology of poetry.
Northern Lights Kin, ananthology of poetry, story and
(01:08):
art by women from Romani,traveler and nomadic communities
.
Prairie Fires, 50 over 50,wagtail, the Romani woman's
poetry anthology.
Garnica's this Will Only Take aMinute winning the Editor's
Choice Award and elsewhere.
She is the co-editor of Throughthe Portal, tales from a
Hopeful Dystopia, exile Editions, following her novella Origins
(01:32):
of Desire in Orchid Fens.
Her novel Nightshade,shortlisted for the Guernica
Prize, will be released byAssembly Press in 2026.
So yay, we're so happy to haveyou Welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So we always like to start with the basics.
Tell us a little more aboutwhere you're from, where your
family is from, and what's yourvisa.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I come from a Romani child family on my father's side
from England.
They came to Canada in theearly 1900s.
In England they wereentertainers and they lived in
the north, in Lancashire, andthey traveled in their Vardo
back and forth across thatparticular part of England,
(02:25):
entertaining at fairs andparties and so on.
They built puppets and mygrandfather, bertrand Hutchinson
, built horses for carousels andpainted them and he was also a
part of the Showman's League atone time when he came to Canada
(02:46):
with the whole family they werestill entertaining.
They were on the road insouthern Ontario and they also
built houses and didconstruction, sold cars
eventually, that kind of thing.
They were also workinginitially in the tobacco fields
(03:06):
of Southern Ontario.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I just love the puppet making in your family
history.
I feel like my mom would havewanted to talk to you so much
about the carousel horses.
She loved carousel horses andfound a vintage one that she
kept in the house.
They're just so cool.
They really are, they're justso cool.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
They really are.
They really are, and I have noidea of the skill and expertise
it would take to actually notonly conceptualize of one but
actually carry it out to thefinal stage of painting.
Oh yeah, I didn't know mygrandfather, but he was
(03:48):
apparently an amazingly talentedperson.
He was able to do a lot ofdifferent things.
A lot of different.
There goes my mind.
Again, he was able to do a lotof different things with his
skills, and I think that's acommon Romani trait you move
from one practice, one economicpractice, to the other,
depending on the circumstancesaround you.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Oh yeah.
I really like that statement.
It rings so true we're expertsin everything.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
All of a sudden, and my dad was as well, when they
came to Canada and they were inthe tobacco belt and he decided
he wanted to be an artist.
So he began to study at nightschool in Hamilton, which is
sort of north of the tobaccobelt, and he became a painter
(04:35):
and a printmaker and he wasaccepted into all different
kinds of artistic societies,like the Royal Canadian Academy
and so forth, and was actuallyacknowledged as the topmost
printmaker of his time in Canada.
And then he stopped practicing.
He stopped practicing hisprintmaking and painting and so
(05:00):
forth and teaching and startedworking for a construction
company and then he startedselling cars and trading cars
and selling cameras and tradingcameras and making silver
jewelry.
So he was really a jack of alltrades.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I love that, love that entrepreneurial spirit.
Yeah, also such an interestinglegacy.
Like to have expertise in allthose really diverse areas.
I just love thatentrepreneurial spirit.
Yeah, also such an interestinglegacy like to have expertise in
all those really diverse areas.
I just love that.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
I know, I know and I don't have that expertise.
I think my daughters do um, butI certainly don't.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I love that, but so we want to ask our famous
question Do you consideryourself a rebel?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
A rebel?
Well, interestingly enough, Iwas talking about that with a
friend on the phone today whoasked me if I was a rebel.
And I have to say that in myown personal life I wasn't
particularly.
I kind of fell into paintingand printmaking because that's
(06:07):
what my parents did.
And then I, I guess about 10years ago, when I was well
advanced into the crone stage ofmy life, I decided I really
wanted to write and so I beganto write.
So that was, as I told myfriend on the phone today, that
(06:28):
was kind of a rebellion againstwhat I'd been doing all my life
and against what was almostexpected of me.
Although I don't think it wasformally expected A rebel
politically, I guess I could beconsidered a rebel politically
too.
My novella, the Orchid novella,is really kind of a screed
(06:53):
against capitalism.
So yeah, in that sense I am arebel.
I go against the dominantculture in many ways.
What were you doing?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
before you were writing.
I actually had no idea that youhave only been writing for a
short time.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
I was a painter.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Yeah, yeah, and I did a lot of community arts
workshops as well with I guessmost recently with Romani
refugee women from Hungary andkids, and I'm part of a
collective called Red Tree, andwe did a lot of these kinds of
(07:33):
workshops.
In fact, we did do a workshopwith women in which they told
their stories and made linoleumblock prints from stories from
their lives.
We made a small book and we gotHedina Siercic and I got
(07:53):
curated into an exhibition atthe Roma Pavilion at the Venice
Biennale in 2011.
And so we did a soundinstallation there which
consisted of her spoken poetry,mine and the stories of the
Hungarian Roma women that theyrecorded and birdsong.
(08:17):
So it was a four part soundinstallation along with the work
of the women.
So, yeah, we've done a numberof different kinds of community
arts workshops, because one ofthe things my father really
impressed upon me was that artwas for the people and that the
people needed to have access toart, and everybody has an artist
(08:39):
in them.
Everybody has that capacity andand it's true?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, that sounds really amazing and I wish I
could have seen that.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
No, I want to go.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
What influences your storytelling and what does
storytelling mean to you?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
What influences my storytelling?
Well, when I was a child, I wasbrought up on a lot of folk
tales, and the ones I reallyremember are the Russian fairy
tales, and that reallyinfluenced me and stayed with me
, because there was a sense ofmany things in those stories
there was magic, there wasbeauty, there was love, there
(09:33):
was hatred, there was horror,there was revenge.
All of that segued into thekind of writing that I've
started to do now, and whatinfluenced my writing?
Was that?
The other part of the question.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And what does storytelling mean to you?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
What does it mean to me?
Oh, my goodness.
To me it means a kind ofsalvation, and I'm not saying
that in the religious sense.
I'm saying that in thereligious sense, I'm saying that
in the personal or social sense.
Salvation in a very hard, darkworld that we're living in.
(10:13):
The idea of storytelling alsomeans agency, that we have power
over our lives.
We have power over our stories.
So many people do not have that, they don't realize that
perhaps they have that agencywithin them, and so that's what
storytelling really does for meis it has given me agency in my
(10:35):
own life, and I think that's thepower and the beauty of telling
stories, of sharing stories, ofhaving your voice out there
stories, of sharing stories, ofhaving your voice out there.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That is really beautiful.
Yeah, that that reallyresonates with me.
The idea of power and agency Ireally love too because we were
talking before about howimportant it is for you know
Roma, to tell stories and that'swhy Paulina and I love to do
this and it fits in.
It fits in in really tight.
Well, we've really loved yourwork for a long time.
We read your work in poetryanthologies.
(11:09):
We adored this latest novella,origins of Desire and Orchid
Fens, and it's a beautiful book.
It's surprising.
It's epistolary at times, withexcerpts from botany texts and
dialogue through text messages,and it also feels like there's a
little fabulism or a littlemagical realism in there.
(11:30):
But then we also, as Roma, arethinking about how magical
realism is sometimes justrealism, to raise Gabriel Garcia
Marquez.
So we would love to know moreabout how you would describe
style or genre in this book.
What kind of literarytraditions or narrative were you
mindful of while you werewriting it?
(11:50):
It's just such an interestingpastiche.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I want to give away a secret here before I start.
You mentioned the botanicaltexts.
Of all the reviews, I've readonly one, caught on to the fact
that I wrote those myself.
They're entirely fake.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Wow, I didn't look it up, but I was just like these
are kind of perfect.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Exactly because they fit into that voice the
description of the flora andfauna and so forth.
And I love the idea of mixingdifferent kinds of writing.
As you tell a story, I guess Ihave the attention span of a
hummingbird or a goldfish, so Idon't stick around with one
(12:41):
particular idea for too long.
Stick around with oneparticular idea for too long and
the idea of botanical texts,particularly fake botanical
texts, which I hope wasn't goingto fool anybody, but it did
fool a few people.
I felt that it was an integralpart of it, because the
botanical text pulls you out ofthe story and you get an
(13:01):
overview and you see thatperhaps this isn't just the tiny
world of the story and you getan overview and you see that
perhaps this isn't just the tinyworld of the young woman orchid
, or the tiny world of the, the,the flowers and the flora and
fauna that she's talking about,but it actually has a much in
our world.
(13:23):
And as far as my writing goes,yeah, I'm going to hark back to
the fairy stories, and the fairystories that, to me, defy genre
because they're abouteverything and they're
(13:47):
essentially lessons about life.
And when I wrote Orchid Iwasn't deliberately referencing
these fairy stories.
But, um, you know, since youyou did ask the question about
where the where the novella camefrom, I would have to say
directly that I was influencedby those fairy stories.
(14:08):
Um, and a lot of them are.
They're about everythingthey're about life, they're
about death, they're aboutfamily, they're about betrayal,
they're about revenge, they'reabout getting one over on
somebody that has done you wrong, and they're about a very
(14:32):
powerful and, I would say,pre-christian spirituality that
really comes through so strongand we just, I mean, I fell in
love with the book.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I just really, really adored it.
I was going to ask, I was goingto be like off the record the
book.
I just really really adored it.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
I was going to ask, I was going to be like off the
record and I so there was aphrase that you use that
reviewers are using to like kindof try to name your work
because it really doesn't fitinto one genre.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, it sort of defies genre.
I think there's a kind ofwriting that defies genre and
actually at a book launch inHamilton the other night I was
talking to the owner of abookstore that was holding the
book launch and we had thebeginnings of a very interesting
conversation about the wholeidea of genre and how some
writers will not be slotted intovery small compartments to
(15:25):
satisfy a particular reader.
I guess one of the two-starreviews I got was I was looking
for horror and there wasn'tenough, which really is a very
interesting contrast from theone, the review from
nerdhorrorcom, which sort of youknow, it was all horror and in
(15:46):
a sense it is a horror storybecause we look at the horrors
of what's going on in the worldaround us.
We look at the horrors of ofthe destruction of the
environment, of the poisoning ofrivers and destruction of
animals, the poisoning of people, the destruction of habitat,
(16:06):
both human and non-human.
It is a horror story.
We're in a horror story.
So in a sense what I'm tryingto do by writing in these little
horror segments is to make thatsense of the horror that much
more acute and that much moremeaningful, because I don't
(16:29):
believe in gratuitous horror.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, that was the quality that I really enjoyed
sitting with in your book.
Like it us to think about whata text can be as well, because
(16:59):
it's so rooted in um in fairylore, which is so cool that's
right.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
and the other thing is also is that I admire writers
and I think that I'm I've I'mlearning how to do this myself
is that, when you are writingabout a very specific thing,
you're my mind's going.
This is the almost 80-year-oldmind that you're dealing with
here, so I sometimes zone out.
(17:28):
We don't have an excuse.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, we don't, it's just, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So what I was going to say is that I don't write to
genre.
Whatever the story needs, Iwill put it in, and so I feel
that genre cannot really definethe stuff I write, Because to me
(17:57):
, what we experience is allaround us.
We experience scientific orbotanical texts or reports from
newspapers.
We experience text messages.
We experience people havingwritten letters in dealing with
the great pain of their lives.
We experience love, weexperience hate and revenge.
(18:21):
We experience spirituality.
So those are all the thingsthat come together, that there's
a confluence of all theseinfluences in the novella and I
think in a lot of veryinteresting novels and short
stories as well.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Is there anything about your writing that you
would describe as distinctlyRomani style?
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I don't know, I guess .
Well, frances Roberts Rileysaid something very interesting
when she wrote about the novella.
Wrote about the novella andFrancis said that it's very much
(19:25):
the art of the Romanistoryteller, much like the
Arabian Thousand and One Nightsstories, where the stories are
fragmented and short and theymove along in the direction that
the storyteller wants them tomove along in.
I don't know if that isdistinctly Romany.
I've read Ron Lee.
His writing is not like that.
His novel, the Living Fire,jivindi Yag, was very much a, I
(19:54):
guess, a typical novel structure, although of course the subject
matter was very specific.
And I read Hedina Siurcic.
It was sort of a fictionalizedautobiography called Rome Like
Thunder, and that again was likeauto fiction.
(20:15):
She really told the story ofgrowing up with her father, with
her family and theirexperiences.
So I don't know if there's aparticular tradition that this
book would adhere to.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, I was thinking a lot about the like what would
the Romani canon look like?
How do we describe what theRomani literary canon is?
And I was circling themes inyour book that I felt like came
up in Romani life, which ismaybe the circle in all of our
art and our, you know, cultureor folklore but, I, wouldn't
(20:54):
necessarily pin it to a style,except I do feel that Roma have
a distinctly poetic way ofspeaking.
I don't know if it's thelanguage, I don't know if it's
like the tradition we're comingout of, but there and I even
love that you included poetry inthe book as part of the
narrative at times, or thingsthat felt like almost like
(21:15):
poetry.
So I'm still circling that ideamyself of like what is
distinctly Romani about anythingbut certain themes I feel like,
of navigating, being anoutsider, navigating duality and
balance and life in differentways that might feel sometimes
horrifying or sometimesharmonious, but yeah, there's
(21:39):
just so much to dig into, and Ireally hope that people keep
reading Romani literature andkeep talking about it, because
we're just so woefullyunderrepresented and we have
such good books.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Well, you know, what's also interesting is that
I think there's a duality goingon.
You have a Romani writer from avery specific country, and the
culture of that country is goingto influence the writing, along
with the Romani ethnicity,practices, language and so forth
.
I'm thinking also of Pupusa'spoetry, which moved me very
(22:14):
greatly when I read it.
So, and and what part of ofthat her poetry is specifically
Romani or has to do with withher life as a Polish writer.
So, you know, there's there'sreally this hybrid that has
coming into Romani writing, Ithink.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Yeah, we have all of these influences.
That's a good thing.
I think Absolutely.
Yeah, we have all of theseinfluences, that's a good thing,
I think.
And we can't be categorizedreally easily.
I don't think, and particularlywhen you think about it.
In Canada, for instance, Ithink there are fewer than five
writers of Romani descent inCanada, in, I think it's more,
(23:00):
but nevertheless it's um, it's avery small number yeah, yeah, I
love that.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
um, there's been a boom and anthologies to with
rain and just Smith's anthologyand Joe Clements like's.
I think we hadn't had ananthology since roads of the
Roma, and so it was nice to havehave a few more coming out and
hopefully more, because I thinkthat we have stories and
literature that people arecurious about at the very least,
(23:30):
and we just need, you know,more people to know that we
exist and we're doing things andencourage others to write too.
Others to tell their stories.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
That's right, exactly , exactly.
I think that one of the thingsthat literature does do, if it
makes it into the dominantculture, into the mainstream
literary world, is it reallyhelps to smash stereotypes?
Oh yeah, literary world is itreally helps to smash
stereotypes?
Oh yeah, and I think that isone of the most important, along
(24:04):
with all of the other veryimportant qualities of Romani
literature that one really doesstand out.
Not that you write in order toconfront stereotypes, but it's
going to be a natural componentof the story that's being told.
Yeah, absolutely.
When I submitted Orchid Aroundto quite a few publishers, I did
(24:26):
make the point that it was aspecifically Romani story about
a Romani family, and that therewere very few Romani writers in
Canada with whom this storycould be compared, because
they're always asking for comps.
Well, there aren't any.
(24:47):
So that's another problem too.
We really have to encourageyoung Romanies, and older Romani
women in particular, to telltheir stories and to begin
writing.
I think it's really, reallyimportant, yeah, not only to
celebrate the culture but again,as I said, to deal with the
(25:08):
stereotypes that invariably rise.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, the best way for our representation to
improve is for us to be,creating our representation, for
sure, and it's it's alsoexciting to that.
I think this will definitelyencourage quite a few writers.
Um, because it's just.
It was so fun to read the book,even even the scary and
upsetting parts.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I was riveted um it was a lot emotionally it was an
emotional roller coaster oh mygoodness, it was really fun to
talk about it with Polly we umyeah, like I still have some
questions and you can cut themout if there's spoilers and we
(25:53):
can ask our editor to cut themout.
But I actually have just beenwondering did Heron know who she
was?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
That's really interesting.
I've kind of left that out.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I know, I know you left it out, I left it out.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
But in fact in the, in the before it was edited, I
worked with my wonderfulpublisher, selena Middleton of
Stelliform and I had written awhole lot of stuff about him and
the family and the idea wasthat in fact he did know who she
was.
But we took that out because wewanted the question to be I
(26:37):
wanted the question to be kindof out there in the air, like
did he know or didn't he know?
I mean, he was.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I know now, that's all that matters.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
A charming monster, eh.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we were talking aboutthat.
That, like such an interestingcharacter, like I can't talk
about what happens, but it waslike I needed more, like I
needed it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
We should probably ask you to just like give your
like little synopsis of the bookfor anyone who might not be
familiar with it.
But before I ask you to do that, and before we get into next
question about water spirits, Ijust have to say on the topic of
Heron, as soon as he came intothe house and he like took off
his shoes and washed yeah, I'mlike that man was raised by a
(27:31):
gypsy and yes, and it turns outthat in fact, yeah yeah, right,
tension, because it was like itdidn't totally like it made it
clear like that he has thiscultural context that he shares
with her and I was like it hasto be him, right, it has to be
him.
(27:51):
So it was so interesting to likehave that tension throughout.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
It was, yeah, masterful, so well done well, of
course that was mother'sinfluence, wasn't it?
Yep, and he was raised by aromani mama yeah, yeah, yeah,
and very sad that she that inorder to uh look after the child
of a, of a rich man, she had toabandon her own child, which is
(28:15):
, I think, something that a lotof women do.
Yep, it's a common story, it'sa very common story and it's a
tragic story, and we can sort ofsee the effects that it had on
Orchid herself.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, no, I just.
I really loved that exploration.
How would you give a synopsisif a listener hadn't heard of
(28:51):
this book yet?
What would you want them toknow about it?
Speaker 4 (28:54):
This is a story about love, gossip, betrayal, water
spirits, capitalism, miners,unions, work, working class,
revenge, mother-daughterrelations, difficult marriages
and orchids and orchid fins.
So that's sort of all thedifferent tag words you could
(29:20):
use to describe it.
But essentially it's the storyof a young English Romany woman,
romany Chell, called OrchidLovell, who moves around Ontario
with her mother who isrightfully, justly, nervous
about having her identitydiscovered, and whenever she
(29:42):
feels that that's close tohappening, they pick up and
leave.
And I guess the last townbefore they lived in Carmontown,
and I used words that relatedto the color red.
They lived in Magenta Falls.
Now they're in Carmontown, andin Magenta Falls Orchid, as a
(30:04):
child, outed herself to abeloved teacher who shut her
down and the mother lost her joband they left.
They came to Carmontown lookingfor hope and a beautiful life
and in fact it didn't turn outto be so beautiful and they took
refuge in the fen.
They visited the fen and theycommuned with the orchids and
(30:25):
with the wildlife there, andit's there that orchid meets her
mysterious and beautiful futurehusband, jack Byszynski.
Is he human or not?
Who is Queenie?
Queenie comes to care for himand she is another otherworldly
creature who is pulling him intoa supernatural world, a ghostly
(30:53):
world.
So there is a very heavilyspiritual element to the whole
story, a very deeply spiritualelement.
But certainly, even though sheherself is not a violent person
or a person who is bent onrevenge in a way emotionally,
she is because of the horrendousthings that, because of a
(31:17):
horrendous betrayal and becauseof the horrendous things that
she has seen that have been doneto particularly one family by
the family of the mine owners.
This is the fire.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
It's such an interesting theme, this idea of
revenge and justified revenge,and so I think that's a really
good segue in that we areobsessed with the Paniraklis and
the water spirits water spiritsso so many different cultures,
including ours, have revenantspirits of women who are often
(31:56):
murdered or otherwise mistreatedor meet their end um by men's
hands or influence and haunt thewaters and take revenge on the
men who deserve it.
And you represent that as wellas your in your novel, which we
love.
That all the women fromdifferent backgrounds and
cultures all have a name forthem or a context for them.
And, please, we would love toknow more about why you wanted
(32:17):
to write about water spirits,and was that lore part of your
childhood?
Tell us what you love aboutthem.
Go off.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
I remember water spirits from my childhood, and
actually I grew up in a house ontop of a cliff down which my
father cut stairs out of theearth so we could reach a small
stream, a very tiny river, and Ispent a lot of time climbing
down those stairs and sitting inthe water and daydreaming and
(32:52):
imagining.
I always had a very strong, Iguess, affinity for magic and
for spirituality as a child andI think that that was a natural
inclination for me because ofall the folk tales and fairy
tales I was fed about, of allthe folk tales and fairy tales I
(33:15):
was fed about, among otherthings, water spirits.
So water spirits have sort ofbeen lurking in the background
for me for most of my life and Iremember first thinking,
writing about them one sentencein a piece of writing that a
friend and I did years and yearsago.
And because then the waterspirits entered my consciousness
(33:36):
, I began to think about themmore, and when I was developing
the idea for the novella, I feltthat water spirits were a
natural way of expressingrevenge.
We can have vengeful thoughtsand violent thoughts and we can
express them through spiritualbeings.
We don't necessarily have tocarry out these acts ourselves.
(33:58):
But what's really interestingis there are a lot of that.
Every culture has a water spiritand there are just so many very
interesting details andvariations that go along with
these water spirits and theirstories.
I just read recently about awater spirit called Mama de Lowe
(34:24):
from St Lucia, trinidad, tobagoand Dominica from St Lucia,
trinidad, tobago and Dominicaand this water spirit.
They're all depicted as beingvery beautiful, but this
particular water spirit punishesmen who commit crimes against
nature poaching, pollutingwaterways, needlessly killing
(34:46):
animals and so forth.
So that's very interesting thatthere is an environmental sense
of environmental revenge,eco-justice with Mama Delo.
But a lot of the river spiritsthat I was dealing with
particular story are kind ofmore, I would say, northern
(35:10):
Eastern European in origin aswell as Celtic, because I again,
because I was raised on Russianfolk tales and fairy stories
that stayed with me.
Those are really the primaryinfluences with water spirits.
(35:32):
But what's interesting is thatthe main purpose of all water
spirits, from what I can gather,is to lure men who have
betrayed, murdered, rejected inany way a young woman, and so
(35:58):
she will lure him into water anddeal with him as she sees fit.
But what is interesting is thatthe water spirits in a lot of
cultures are destined to liveout the rest of their earthly
lives as water spirits.
So this isn't something thatgoes on for thousands and
(36:24):
thousands of years, becausethere are so many little
offshoots about water spiritsthat you could really get into,
which I didn't want to, becauseI felt I really needed to
streamline the story around thespecific problems and concerns
(36:47):
of the community yes, so I.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
I don't want to word it in a way that will give
anything away, but did the waterspirits appear differently to
different people?
Like did they appeardifferently to men?
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Oh, wow, I love that question.
Well, when Orchid first bringsher beloved Jack to see the
water spirits because she's abit of a prankster I think they
both saw the same thing becausehe did recognize one of the
(37:34):
young women.
And now I'm having to go inanother direction here, because
I'm thinking that for a man whois not somebody like Jack
Byszynski, who is, he'sdefinitely not an enemy of the
water spirits and they, I thinkthey, they they feel fairly
generously towards him.
(37:55):
But for the enemies, I wouldsay the water spirits would be
much like the sirens of Greekmyth that are very beautiful and
alluring and they sing and thatsinging pulls men to the side
of the river where they arecaught and pulled under.
So yeah, I think you've reallyhit on an important point there,
(38:19):
paulina.
I think they perhaps do appeardifferently to women than they
do to men, because for women, asone of the characters says,
these are the girls of ourcommunity community and we love
them and we mourn them.
So for them they are youngwomen who are carrying out the
revenge that the living womenwish that they themselves could
(38:42):
carry out against, againstmurderers or the men who abuse
them.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I also had another question, so thank you for
clarifying that, because I wasthinking like maybe, even though
their true you know, even theirtrue form may have been just so
beautiful and sexy at the sametime.
You know what I mean, like younever know with men.
You know what I'm saying.
(39:09):
Yeah, anything that movessometimes okay, so um the theme
of pure novel.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
You should be writing a novel we, we will hopefully
okay yes, yes, do um.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
The theme of pure and impure is so present in the
novel and in some verycomplicated ways, from medical
crisis to love and sex and eventhe character's name.
We would love for you to speakabout that tension in the book,
kind of like muddy meh and stufflike that too.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, book kind of like muddy meh and
stuff like that too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I was brought up with afew very strict ideas and those
were related to, I guess,leaving the the dirty world
outside and the clean worldinside.
So there were certain thingsthat were not done in our
(40:12):
household.
One was related specifically toanimals.
You don't kiss an animal, youdon't let it eat from your dish,
you don't let it walk acrossyour kitchen table or your
kitchen counters, you don'tbring it into the bed with you.
You wash your hands after youhave touched the animal.
(40:33):
No matter how much you lovethat animal, you wash your hands
.
And that's sort of how I grewup.
And oh, food the other thingwas food Don't drop food on the
floor.
If you drop food on the floor,you throw it out floor.
If you drop food on the floor,you throw it out.
And a whole lot of other littlecomponents, sort of offshoots of
(41:00):
those particular practiceswhich come.
I mean, they're quite sensiblepractices because they come from
a period of forest nomadism inwhich you had to keep the dirt
on the outside and thecleanliness on the inside to
avoid getting sick.
You had to be very carefulabout animals, about what you
touched about.
You know whether food fell onthe ground and became
(41:21):
contaminated.
So you know, even though todaya lot of people may not follow
those kinds of practices,practices they did have their
roots in in, I think, very soundideas about cleanliness.
So for um, for orchid, yeah, shekind of extrapolates from this
(41:44):
and she adopts her own puritycodes and, and the purity codes
are essentially things thatreally matter to her in terms of
what she will bring into herlife, what she will accept and
what she will not accept.
What is marimé, what is defiled,and to her the whole idea of
(42:09):
defilement is about thedestruction of the fen by the
mining company, the attacks onwomen by violent men, and in
terms of her life with Jack,even his wounds, when the
(42:31):
attempt is made in his life,make him defiled for a period of
time and I think she wants torecover that.
She wants not recover, but shewants to pass through that so
that again they can have this,what she considers to be a pure,
untouched kind of love.
But so there are those tensionsand particularly socially
(42:57):
you'll find those tensionsbetween someone who practices
purity codes and someone whodoesn't.
And how do you have that personin your life.
So she actually does teach Jackhow to be in the kitchen, how
to be in the house, and that'sone of the things that actually
(43:19):
brings him closer to her mother,because her mother at one point
says I can see that he's, he'suh, he's kind of like a proper
Romany mush.
He's in the kitchen, he'scleaning, he's behaving as he
should.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I loved that developing relationship between
Jack and the mother and thatpart with him giving her the
binoculars so she could draw themoon.
I was crying, I was like that'sso nice.
He recognized her talent andinterest.
That's right, that's right,that's right.
It was just really.
It was really wholesome andsweet and it wasn't an easy
(43:57):
relationship and I loved that,the way that they softened to
each other.
Um, and I loved his care aboutwanting to make her feel welcome
and comfortable and seen that'sright, that's right, and he and
, and that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
And I think you were mentioning something about the
binoculars and encouraging herto draw the moon, and I think
you know that's another way ofhaving agency is to actually,
when you see something, tointerpret it through your own
eye and your own work, and so Ithink he saw that in her and I
think that really helped tobridge that gap between them.
(44:37):
I think he had to do a lot ofwork and she, mother, had to do
a lot of work too.
Yeah, they met each otherhalfway.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
They met each other halfway, yeah, yeah we have a
(45:10):
kind of heady question next whatwould you like to see happen
for Romani literature movingforward?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I would like to see.
This is my kind of my utopianidea, which is I would like to
see community organizationsbring people together to start
writing their stories and Iwould like to see not just
writing their stories one mentorwith a Romani writer who is a
(45:43):
mentor.
I think that would be the mostideal thing, because I think we
have to start from the roots up.
(46:04):
So that's one direction I wouldreally like to see Romani
literature going in, becausethat's how so many people in
other cultures have gottenstarted with their writing.
They haven't necessarily goneto university, they haven't
necessarily had contact withwriters, but I think there is a
(46:30):
potential writer in everyone andin fact, when we did this a
small book for the Biennaleproject, the Venice Biennale
project the stories that thosewomen wrote were very beautiful
and very touching and, for them,very empowering.
(46:51):
So I would like to to seesomething like that, um embedded
somehow in a communityorganization yeah, beautiful
idea I love, definitely youagree, I think that model was
very successful in nigeria, andthen there was this boom of
Nigerian writers going reallymainstream.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
So like, yeah, let's do, let's get that done.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
there is there.
There is a prototype fordeveloping this kind of practice
.
Well, you look at Paulo FreireI don't know if I've said his
name right, oh God, I can'tremember the name of his book
but it's about writing for thedispossessed.
(47:37):
I'll have to find the name ofthe book and I will send it to
you.
It's about education and aboutpopular education and really
educating from the body and fromthe experience rather than from
an elevated academicperspective.
Hello Bob, I think there are alot of models like that.
(48:02):
Yeah, he did it actually, Ithink.
Theater of the Dispossessed.
He did it mainly with theater,I think.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
I was just going to say do you think you can share a
little bit with us about yourupcoming novel Nightshade?
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Yes, I will.
Nightshade started out as astory based on the experiences
or inspired by the experiencesof my dad's family.
When they came to story andthat got published in Room
Magazine and a friend said, whydon't you turn that into a novel
?
And I thought, okay, so I did.
I expanded on it and turned itinto a novel and so it's
inspired by the women of myfather's family my aunt, who was
(49:09):
a very strange and eccentrichealer of birds, and my
grandmother and my other aunt.
Nightshade came from a story ofthe same name based on the women
of my dad's family, and it'salso one of these stories that
(49:31):
isn't specifically one kind ofgenre.
It deals with the family ofwomen who came to Canada and who
have brought their puppets withthem, their troop of puppets,
and their puppets are large,they're the size of children.
I could actually take thiscomputer upstairs and show it to
(49:51):
you, show them to you later, orthe one puppet that I have left
.
But so in the story the puppetscome to life.
When the women put on theseperformances they tell the
stories of the oppression thatthe women have faced, the beauty
of their culture, the wholeidea again of revenge, and so
(50:13):
there's kind of a verysupernatural element to the
story, in which we have our reallife of hardship working in the
tobacco fields.
The young woman who's theprotagonist of the story works
for the wife of the wealthyowner of a tobacco farm and she
(50:34):
becomes very enchanted with theidea of leading a non-Romany
life having blonde hair, havingjewelry, having a life of luxury
in a huge house and at the sametime she begins to develop a
very dark attraction to thehusband, and this is in
(50:56):
opposition to what her motherand her aunts believe, that the
family really needs to be heldtogether.
So it's a struggle for herbetween her family life and her
devotion to her family and thepuppets and her desire to enter
the world of the dominantculture, the non-romantic world
(51:17):
that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I can't wait.
We also love to ask who is yourRomani crush, a Romani person
you really admire and you wantthe listeners to know about.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Oh well, I can say there are a number of people,
but one person who really comesto the forefront is Mihaela
Dragan and her theater company,juvli Pen.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
We love her.
Speaker 4 (51:46):
They do such wonderful work.
I think she's a brilliantwriter, she's a brilliant actor,
she's fearless, she'sprincipled, she doesn't take
shit, and I really admire that.
She's just amazing.
And the theater company doessome pretty terrific work as
(52:07):
well, and I would really like tosee small theater groups like
this springing up arounddifferent countries.
Oh yeah, the work that they'redoing is so valuable, yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
It's truly remarkable .
They're pioneering so much andshe's a wonderful person.
We're really happy.
She was our second interviewever, so, listeners, you can go
back and listen.
We probably sounded a littlebit scared because we really
knew it, but she's just so great.
Speaker 4 (52:39):
Yeah, oh, I was just going to say also, another
person that was really importantin my life was Ron Lee no
relation.
I met him when I was, I guess,quite a few years ago and got
involved through him with RomaCommunity Center and ended up on
the board and we became verygood friends.
(53:00):
He was like a mentor for me andI really appreciated his, his
perspective on everything.
You know, he was not a sexist,he was a feminist.
He he believed in inalienablehuman rights.
For all that, human rightscould not be cherry picked.
(53:20):
He had an internationalistperspective.
He was really an extraordinaryperson.
So that's somebody that I stillcarry with me in my life and it
was so sad to see him go.
Yeah, yeah.
We lost such an important personand I remember thinking, even
(53:41):
as he was old and getting veryfrail, that I thought what are
we going to do without him?
But I think he he left enoughof a legacy of his own strength
and his own incrediblegenerosity that we are doing
well and it's um.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
for many people it's thanks to him oh yeah, he
continues to be an inspiration.
I felt very fortunate that thatwe corresponded a little bit
and I really loved therelationship that we had, mostly
over email and Facebook.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
He was just so a true mentor, like just such a
wonderful, generous, brilliantspirit really we had a lot of
dinner parties here, and when hewent to Toronto to do
interpretation for refugeeclaims, he would stay here at
the house and so we would be upuntil two in the morning talking
(54:34):
.
He had such energy, he's hadsuch energy.
I wish a lot of young peoplewould have had that energy.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah, yeah, he's a special one.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:52):
So how can people best find you and support your
work?
You could go to my website,which is lynnhutchinsonleeca
L-Y-N-N-H-U-T-C-H-I-N-S-O-Nca.
You can go to Stelliform Press,which would be
wwwstelliformpress, I guess comor ca.
(55:14):
Stelliform is spelledS-T-E-L-L-I-F-O-R-M, and that's
where you can find the novellaOrchid.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Wonderful.
Yeah, we'll put links in theshow notes and um, I can send
you links.
Speaker 4 (55:31):
I can send you links and there's all yeah, but you'll
find that information certainlyon my website and I'll send you
the stelliform link as wellwonderful.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yeah, everyone.
Go buy the book, request it atyour library, request it at your
library, request it at yourfavorite bookstore.
That's the best way for writersto be supported is even if you
can't buy it, ask for places tocarry it.
It really makes a difference.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
They do have an American distributor too, I
believe.
Oh, amazing.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
If you read it, leave a really good review.
Wherever you know you canreview books, it really makes a
huge difference.
Thank you so much, lynn, forspeaking with us.
It's just such a joy Like welove you.
We love your book.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Thank you for doing great.
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
So lovely.
I love you too, and I loveRomanistan.
I think you do wonderful work.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Thank you so much, thank you for listening to
romanistan podcast you can findus on instagram t TikTok and
(56:47):
Facebook at Romanistan Podcastand on Twitter at RomanistanPod.
To support us, join our Patreonfor extra content or just
donate to our Ko-Fi fundraiser,ko-ficom backslash Romanistan,
and please rate, review andsubscribe.
It helps people find our show.
(57:07):
It helps us so much.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
You can follow Jez on Instagram at jasminavantila and
Paulina at romaniholistic.
You can get our book Secrets ofRomani Fortune Telling online
or wherever books are sold.
Visit romanistanpodcastcom forevents, educational resources
and more.
Email us at romanistanpodcastat gmailcom for inquiries.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Von Tila and Paulina
Stevens, conceived of by PaulinaStevens, edited by Victor
Pachas, with music by VictorPachas and artwork by Elijah
Bardo.
Welcome to Romanistan .
Speaker 3 (00:10):
We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I'm Paulina.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
And I'm Jez.
And today we are so excited totalk to Lynn Hutchinson Lee
about her debut novella, Originsof Desire and Orchid Femme.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Daughter of printmakers and painters, an
English Romani father andScottish English, irish mother,
lynn Hutchinson Lee is amultidisciplinary artist and
writer based in Toronto, canada.
Lynn spent her childhoodsummers in a forest, surrounded
by marshes and bogs, and theirlush beauty and magic haunt her
(00:48):
writing.
She was first place winner ofthe 2022 Kagawa Award for
Fiction.
Her writing is published inRoom Weird Horror.
Northern Lights Kin, ananthology of poetry.
Northern Lights Kin, ananthology of poetry, story and
(01:08):
art by women from Romani,traveler and nomadic communities
.
Prairie Fires, 50 over 50,wagtail, the Romani woman's
poetry anthology.
Garnica's this Will Only Take aMinute winning the Editor's
Choice Award and elsewhere.
She is the co-editor of Throughthe Portal, tales from a
Hopeful Dystopia, exile Editions, following her novella Origins
(01:32):
of Desire in Orchid Fens.
Her novel Nightshade,shortlisted for the Guernica
Prize, will be released byAssembly Press in 2026.
So yay, we're so happy to haveyou Welcome.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
So we always like to start with the basics.
Tell us a little more aboutwhere you're from, where your
family is from, and what's yourvisa.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
I come from a Romani child family on my father's side
from England.
They came to Canada in theearly 1900s.
In England they wereentertainers and they lived in
the north, in Lancashire, andthey traveled in their Vardo
back and forth across thatparticular part of England,
(02:25):
entertaining at fairs andparties and so on.
They built puppets and mygrandfather, bertrand Hutchinson
, built horses for carousels andpainted them and he was also a
part of the Showman's League atone time when he came to Canada
(02:46):
with the whole family they werestill entertaining.
They were on the road insouthern Ontario and they also
built houses and didconstruction, sold cars
eventually, that kind of thing.
They were also workinginitially in the tobacco fields
(03:06):
of Southern Ontario.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I just love the puppet making in your family
history.
I feel like my mom would havewanted to talk to you so much
about the carousel horses.
She loved carousel horses andfound a vintage one that she
kept in the house.
They're just so cool.
They really are, they're justso cool.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
They really are.
They really are, and I have noidea of the skill and expertise
it would take to actually notonly conceptualize of one but
actually carry it out to thefinal stage of painting.
Oh yeah, I didn't know mygrandfather, but he was
(03:48):
apparently an amazingly talentedperson.
He was able to do a lot ofdifferent things.
A lot of different.
There goes my mind.
Again, he was able to do a lotof different things with his
skills, and I think that's acommon Romani trait you move
from one practice, one economicpractice, to the other,
depending on the circumstancesaround you.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Oh yeah.
I really like that statement.
It rings so true we're expertsin everything.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
All of a sudden, and my dad was as well, when they
came to Canada and they were inthe tobacco belt and he decided
he wanted to be an artist.
So he began to study at nightschool in Hamilton, which is
sort of north of the tobaccobelt, and he became a painter
(04:35):
and a printmaker and he wasaccepted into all different
kinds of artistic societies,like the Royal Canadian Academy
and so forth, and was actuallyacknowledged as the topmost
printmaker of his time in Canada.
And then he stopped practicing.
He stopped practicing hisprintmaking and painting and so
(05:00):
forth and teaching and startedworking for a construction
company and then he startedselling cars and trading cars
and selling cameras and tradingcameras and making silver
jewelry.
So he was really a jack of alltrades.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I love that, love that entrepreneurial spirit.
Yeah, also such an interestinglegacy.
Like to have expertise in allthose really diverse areas.
I just love thatentrepreneurial spirit.
Yeah, also such an interestinglegacy like to have expertise in
all those really diverse areas.
I just love that.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
I know, I know and I don't have that expertise.
I think my daughters do um, butI certainly don't.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I love that, but so we want to ask our famous
question Do you consideryourself a rebel?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
A rebel?
Well, interestingly enough, Iwas talking about that with a
friend on the phone today whoasked me if I was a rebel.
And I have to say that in myown personal life I wasn't
particularly.
I kind of fell into paintingand printmaking because that's
(06:07):
what my parents did.
And then I, I guess about 10years ago, when I was well
advanced into the crone stage ofmy life, I decided I really
wanted to write and so I beganto write.
So that was, as I told myfriend on the phone today, that
(06:28):
was kind of a rebellion againstwhat I'd been doing all my life
and against what was almostexpected of me.
Although I don't think it wasformally expected A rebel
politically, I guess I could beconsidered a rebel politically
too.
My novella, the Orchid novella,is really kind of a screed
(06:53):
against capitalism.
So yeah, in that sense I am arebel.
I go against the dominantculture in many ways.
What were you doing?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
before you were writing.
I actually had no idea that youhave only been writing for a
short time.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
I was a painter.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Yeah, yeah, and I did a lot of community arts
workshops as well with I guessmost recently with Romani
refugee women from Hungary andkids, and I'm part of a
collective called Red Tree, andwe did a lot of these kinds of
(07:33):
workshops.
In fact, we did do a workshopwith women in which they told
their stories and made linoleumblock prints from stories from
their lives.
We made a small book and we gotHedina Siercic and I got
(07:53):
curated into an exhibition atthe Roma Pavilion at the Venice
Biennale in 2011.
And so we did a soundinstallation there which
consisted of her spoken poetry,mine and the stories of the
Hungarian Roma women that theyrecorded and birdsong.
(08:17):
So it was a four part soundinstallation along with the work
of the women.
So, yeah, we've done a numberof different kinds of community
arts workshops, because one ofthe things my father really
impressed upon me was that artwas for the people and that the
people needed to have access toart, and everybody has an artist
(08:39):
in them.
Everybody has that capacity andand it's true?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Well, that sounds really amazing and I wish I
could have seen that.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
No, I want to go.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
What influences your storytelling and what does
storytelling mean to you?
Speaker 4 (09:10):
What influences my storytelling?
Well, when I was a child, I wasbrought up on a lot of folk
tales, and the ones I reallyremember are the Russian fairy
tales, and that reallyinfluenced me and stayed with me
, because there was a sense ofmany things in those stories
there was magic, there wasbeauty, there was love, there
(09:33):
was hatred, there was horror,there was revenge.
All of that segued into thekind of writing that I've
started to do now, and whatinfluenced my writing?
Was that?
The other part of the question.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And what does storytelling mean to you?
Speaker 4 (09:52):
What does it mean to me?
Oh, my goodness.
To me it means a kind ofsalvation, and I'm not saying
that in the religious sense.
I'm saying that in thereligious sense, I'm saying that
in the personal or social sense.
Salvation in a very hard, darkworld that we're living in.
(10:13):
The idea of storytelling alsomeans agency, that we have power
over our lives.
We have power over our stories.
So many people do not have that, they don't realize that
perhaps they have that agencywithin them, and so that's what
storytelling really does for meis it has given me agency in my
(10:35):
own life, and I think that's thepower and the beauty of telling
stories, of sharing stories, ofhaving your voice out there
stories, of sharing stories, ofhaving your voice out there.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That is really beautiful.
Yeah, that that reallyresonates with me.
The idea of power and agency Ireally love too because we were
talking before about howimportant it is for you know
Roma, to tell stories and that'swhy Paulina and I love to do
this and it fits in.
It fits in in really tight.
Well, we've really loved yourwork for a long time.
We read your work in poetryanthologies.
(11:09):
We adored this latest novella,origins of Desire and Orchid
Fens, and it's a beautiful book.
It's surprising.
It's epistolary at times, withexcerpts from botany texts and
dialogue through text messages,and it also feels like there's a
little fabulism or a littlemagical realism in there.
(11:30):
But then we also, as Roma, arethinking about how magical
realism is sometimes justrealism, to raise Gabriel Garcia
Marquez.
So we would love to know moreabout how you would describe
style or genre in this book.
What kind of literarytraditions or narrative were you
mindful of while you werewriting it?
(11:50):
It's just such an interestingpastiche.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
I want to give away a secret here before I start.
You mentioned the botanicaltexts.
Of all the reviews, I've readonly one, caught on to the fact
that I wrote those myself.
They're entirely fake.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Wow, I didn't look it up, but I was just like these
are kind of perfect.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Exactly because they fit into that voice the
description of the flora andfauna and so forth.
And I love the idea of mixingdifferent kinds of writing.
As you tell a story, I guess Ihave the attention span of a
hummingbird or a goldfish, so Idon't stick around with one
(12:41):
particular idea for too long.
Stick around with oneparticular idea for too long and
the idea of botanical texts,particularly fake botanical
texts, which I hope wasn't goingto fool anybody, but it did
fool a few people.
I felt that it was an integralpart of it, because the
botanical text pulls you out ofthe story and you get an
(13:01):
overview and you see thatperhaps this isn't just the tiny
world of the story and you getan overview and you see that
perhaps this isn't just the tinyworld of the young woman orchid
, or the tiny world of the, the,the flowers and the flora and
fauna that she's talking about,but it actually has a much in
our world.
(13:23):
And as far as my writing goes,yeah, I'm going to hark back to
the fairy stories, and the fairystories that, to me, defy genre
because they're abouteverything and they're
(13:47):
essentially lessons about life.
And when I wrote Orchid Iwasn't deliberately referencing
these fairy stories.
But, um, you know, since youyou did ask the question about
where the where the novella camefrom, I would have to say
directly that I was influencedby those fairy stories.
(14:08):
Um, and a lot of them are.
They're about everythingthey're about life, they're
about death, they're aboutfamily, they're about betrayal,
they're about revenge, they'reabout getting one over on
somebody that has done you wrong, and they're about a very
(14:32):
powerful and, I would say,pre-christian spirituality that
really comes through so strongand we just, I mean, I fell in
love with the book.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I just really, really adored it.
I was going to ask, I was goingto be like off the record the
book.
I just really really adored it.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
I was going to ask, I was going to be like off the
record and I so there was aphrase that you use that
reviewers are using to like kindof try to name your work
because it really doesn't fitinto one genre.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Well, it sort of defies genre.
I think there's a kind ofwriting that defies genre and
actually at a book launch inHamilton the other night I was
talking to the owner of abookstore that was holding the
book launch and we had thebeginnings of a very interesting
conversation about the wholeidea of genre and how some
writers will not be slotted intovery small compartments to
(15:25):
satisfy a particular reader.
I guess one of the two-starreviews I got was I was looking
for horror and there wasn'tenough, which really is a very
interesting contrast from theone, the review from
nerdhorrorcom, which sort of youknow, it was all horror and in
(15:46):
a sense it is a horror storybecause we look at the horrors
of what's going on in the worldaround us.
We look at the horrors of ofthe destruction of the
environment, of the poisoning ofrivers and destruction of
animals, the poisoning of people, the destruction of habitat,
(16:06):
both human and non-human.
It is a horror story.
We're in a horror story.
So in a sense what I'm tryingto do by writing in these little
horror segments is to make thatsense of the horror that much
more acute and that much moremeaningful, because I don't
(16:29):
believe in gratuitous horror.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, that was the quality that I really enjoyed
sitting with in your book.
Like it us to think about whata text can be as well, because
(16:59):
it's so rooted in um in fairylore, which is so cool that's
right.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
and the other thing is also is that I admire writers
and I think that I'm I've I'mlearning how to do this myself
is that, when you are writingabout a very specific thing,
you're my mind's going.
This is the almost 80-year-oldmind that you're dealing with
here, so I sometimes zone out.
(17:28):
We don't have an excuse.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Yeah, we don't, it's just, don't worry.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
So what I was going to say is that I don't write to
genre.
Whatever the story needs, Iwill put it in, and so I feel
that genre cannot really definethe stuff I write, Because to me
(17:57):
, what we experience is allaround us.
We experience scientific orbotanical texts or reports from
newspapers.
We experience text messages.
We experience people havingwritten letters in dealing with
the great pain of their lives.
We experience love, weexperience hate and revenge.
(18:21):
We experience spirituality.
So those are all the thingsthat come together, that there's
a confluence of all theseinfluences in the novella and I
think in a lot of veryinteresting novels and short
stories as well.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Is there anything about your writing that you
would describe as distinctlyRomani style?
Speaker 4 (19:02):
I don't know, I guess .
Well, frances Roberts Rileysaid something very interesting
when she wrote about the novella.
Wrote about the novella andFrancis said that it's very much
(19:25):
the art of the Romanistoryteller, much like the
Arabian Thousand and One Nightsstories, where the stories are
fragmented and short and theymove along in the direction that
the storyteller wants them tomove along in.
I don't know if that isdistinctly Romany.
I've read Ron Lee.
His writing is not like that.
His novel, the Living Fire,jivindi Yag, was very much a, I
(19:54):
guess, a typical novel structure, although of course the subject
matter was very specific.
And I read Hedina Siurcic.
It was sort of a fictionalizedautobiography called Rome Like
Thunder, and that again was likeauto fiction.
(20:15):
She really told the story ofgrowing up with her father, with
her family and theirexperiences.
So I don't know if there's aparticular tradition that this
book would adhere to.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, I was thinking a lot about the like what would
the Romani canon look like?
How do we describe what theRomani literary canon is?
And I was circling themes inyour book that I felt like came
up in Romani life, which ismaybe the circle in all of our
art and our, you know, cultureor folklore but, I, wouldn't
(20:54):
necessarily pin it to a style,except I do feel that Roma have
a distinctly poetic way ofspeaking.
I don't know if it's thelanguage, I don't know if it's
like the tradition we're comingout of, but there and I even
love that you included poetry inthe book as part of the
narrative at times, or thingsthat felt like almost like
(21:15):
poetry.
So I'm still circling that ideamyself of like what is
distinctly Romani about anythingbut certain themes I feel like,
of navigating, being anoutsider, navigating duality and
balance and life in differentways that might feel sometimes
horrifying or sometimesharmonious, but yeah, there's
(21:39):
just so much to dig into, and Ireally hope that people keep
reading Romani literature andkeep talking about it, because
we're just so woefullyunderrepresented and we have
such good books.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Well, you know, what's also interesting is that
I think there's a duality goingon.
You have a Romani writer from avery specific country, and the
culture of that country is goingto influence the writing, along
with the Romani ethnicity,practices, language and so forth
.
I'm thinking also of Pupusa'spoetry, which moved me very
(22:14):
greatly when I read it.
So, and and what part of ofthat her poetry is specifically
Romani or has to do with withher life as a Polish writer.
So, you know, there's there'sreally this hybrid that has
coming into Romani writing, Ithink.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Yeah, we have all of these influences.
That's a good thing.
I think Absolutely.
Yeah, we have all of theseinfluences, that's a good thing,
I think.
And we can't be categorizedreally easily.
I don't think, and particularlywhen you think about it.
In Canada, for instance, Ithink there are fewer than five
writers of Romani descent inCanada, in, I think it's more,
(23:00):
but nevertheless it's um, it's avery small number yeah, yeah, I
love that.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
um, there's been a boom and anthologies to with
rain and just Smith's anthologyand Joe Clements like's.
I think we hadn't had ananthology since roads of the
Roma, and so it was nice to havehave a few more coming out and
hopefully more, because I thinkthat we have stories and
literature that people arecurious about at the very least,
(23:30):
and we just need, you know,more people to know that we
exist and we're doing things andencourage others to write too.
Others to tell their stories.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
That's right, exactly , exactly.
I think that one of the thingsthat literature does do, if it
makes it into the dominantculture, into the mainstream
literary world, is it reallyhelps to smash stereotypes?
Oh yeah, literary world is itreally helps to smash
stereotypes?
Oh yeah, and I think that isone of the most important, along
(24:04):
with all of the other veryimportant qualities of Romani
literature that one really doesstand out.
Not that you write in order toconfront stereotypes, but it's
going to be a natural componentof the story that's being told.
Yeah, absolutely.
When I submitted Orchid Aroundto quite a few publishers, I did
(24:26):
make the point that it was aspecifically Romani story about
a Romani family, and that therewere very few Romani writers in
Canada with whom this storycould be compared, because
they're always asking for comps.
Well, there aren't any.
(24:47):
So that's another problem too.
We really have to encourageyoung Romanies, and older Romani
women in particular, to telltheir stories and to begin
writing.
I think it's really, reallyimportant, yeah, not only to
celebrate the culture but again,as I said, to deal with the
(25:08):
stereotypes that invariably rise.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Yeah, the best way for our representation to
improve is for us to be,creating our representation, for
sure, and it's it's alsoexciting to that.
I think this will definitelyencourage quite a few writers.
Um, because it's just.
It was so fun to read the book,even even the scary and
upsetting parts.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I was riveted um it was a lot emotionally it was an
emotional roller coaster oh mygoodness, it was really fun to
talk about it with Polly we umyeah, like I still have some
questions and you can cut themout if there's spoilers and we
(25:53):
can ask our editor to cut themout.
But I actually have just beenwondering did Heron know who she
was?
Speaker 4 (26:04):
That's really interesting.
I've kind of left that out.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I know, I know you left it out, I left it out.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
But in fact in the, in the before it was edited, I
worked with my wonderfulpublisher, selena Middleton of
Stelliform and I had written awhole lot of stuff about him and
the family and the idea wasthat in fact he did know who she
was.
But we took that out because wewanted the question to be I
(26:37):
wanted the question to be kindof out there in the air, like
did he know or didn't he know?
I mean, he was.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I know now, that's all that matters.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
A charming monster, eh.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we were talking aboutthat.
That, like such an interestingcharacter, like I can't talk
about what happens, but it waslike I needed more, like I
needed it was crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
We should probably ask you to just like give your
like little synopsis of the bookfor anyone who might not be
familiar with it.
But before I ask you to do that, and before we get into next
question about water spirits, Ijust have to say on the topic of
Heron, as soon as he came intothe house and he like took off
his shoes and washed yeah, I'mlike that man was raised by a
(27:31):
gypsy and yes, and it turns outthat in fact, yeah yeah, right,
tension, because it was like itdidn't totally like it made it
clear like that he has thiscultural context that he shares
with her and I was like it hasto be him, right, it has to be
him.
(27:51):
So it was so interesting to likehave that tension throughout.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
It was, yeah, masterful, so well done well, of
course that was mother'sinfluence, wasn't it?
Yep, and he was raised by aromani mama yeah, yeah, yeah,
and very sad that she that inorder to uh look after the child
of a, of a rich man, she had toabandon her own child, which is
(28:15):
, I think, something that a lotof women do.
Yep, it's a common story, it'sa very common story and it's a
tragic story, and we can sort ofsee the effects that it had on
Orchid herself.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, no, I just.
I really loved that exploration.
How would you give a synopsisif a listener hadn't heard of
(28:51):
this book yet?
What would you want them toknow about it?
Speaker 4 (28:54):
This is a story about love, gossip, betrayal, water
spirits, capitalism, miners,unions, work, working class,
revenge, mother-daughterrelations, difficult marriages
and orchids and orchid fins.
So that's sort of all thedifferent tag words you could
(29:20):
use to describe it.
But essentially it's the storyof a young English Romany woman,
romany Chell, called OrchidLovell, who moves around Ontario
with her mother who isrightfully, justly, nervous
about having her identitydiscovered, and whenever she
(29:42):
feels that that's close tohappening, they pick up and
leave.
And I guess the last townbefore they lived in Carmontown,
and I used words that relatedto the color red.
They lived in Magenta Falls.
Now they're in Carmontown, andin Magenta Falls Orchid, as a
(30:04):
child, outed herself to abeloved teacher who shut her
down and the mother lost her joband they left.
They came to Carmontown lookingfor hope and a beautiful life
and in fact it didn't turn outto be so beautiful and they took
refuge in the fen.
They visited the fen and theycommuned with the orchids and
(30:25):
with the wildlife there, andit's there that orchid meets her
mysterious and beautiful futurehusband, jack Byszynski.
Is he human or not?
Who is Queenie?
Queenie comes to care for himand she is another otherworldly
creature who is pulling him intoa supernatural world, a ghostly
(30:53):
world.
So there is a very heavilyspiritual element to the whole
story, a very deeply spiritualelement.
But certainly, even though sheherself is not a violent person
or a person who is bent onrevenge in a way emotionally,
she is because of the horrendousthings that, because of a
(31:17):
horrendous betrayal and becauseof the horrendous things that
she has seen that have been doneto particularly one family by
the family of the mine owners.
This is the fire.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
It's such an interesting theme, this idea of
revenge and justified revenge,and so I think that's a really
good segue in that we areobsessed with the Paniraklis and
the water spirits water spiritsso so many different cultures,
including ours, have revenantspirits of women who are often
(31:56):
murdered or otherwise mistreatedor meet their end um by men's
hands or influence and haunt thewaters and take revenge on the
men who deserve it.
And you represent that as wellas your in your novel, which we
love.
That all the women fromdifferent backgrounds and
cultures all have a name forthem or a context for them.
And, please, we would love toknow more about why you wanted
(32:17):
to write about water spirits,and was that lore part of your
childhood?
Tell us what you love aboutthem.
Go off.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
I remember water spirits from my childhood, and
actually I grew up in a house ontop of a cliff down which my
father cut stairs out of theearth so we could reach a small
stream, a very tiny river, and Ispent a lot of time climbing
down those stairs and sitting inthe water and daydreaming and
(32:52):
imagining.
I always had a very strong, Iguess, affinity for magic and
for spirituality as a child andI think that that was a natural
inclination for me because ofall the folk tales and fairy
tales I was fed about, of allthe folk tales and fairy tales I
(33:15):
was fed about, among otherthings, water spirits.
So water spirits have sort ofbeen lurking in the background
for me for most of my life and Iremember first thinking,
writing about them one sentencein a piece of writing that a
friend and I did years and yearsago.
And because then the waterspirits entered my consciousness
(33:36):
, I began to think about themmore, and when I was developing
the idea for the novella, I feltthat water spirits were a
natural way of expressingrevenge.
We can have vengeful thoughtsand violent thoughts and we can
express them through spiritualbeings.
We don't necessarily have tocarry out these acts ourselves.
(33:58):
But what's really interestingis there are a lot of that.
Every culture has a water spiritand there are just so many very
interesting details andvariations that go along with
these water spirits and theirstories.
I just read recently about awater spirit called Mama de Lowe
(34:24):
from St Lucia, trinidad, tobagoand Dominica from St Lucia,
trinidad, tobago and Dominicaand this water spirit.
They're all depicted as beingvery beautiful, but this
particular water spirit punishesmen who commit crimes against
nature poaching, pollutingwaterways, needlessly killing
(34:46):
animals and so forth.
So that's very interesting thatthere is an environmental sense
of environmental revenge,eco-justice with Mama Delo.
But a lot of the river spiritsthat I was dealing with
particular story are kind ofmore, I would say, northern
(35:10):
Eastern European in origin aswell as Celtic, because I again,
because I was raised on Russianfolk tales and fairy stories
that stayed with me.
Those are really the primaryinfluences with water spirits.
(35:32):
But what's interesting is thatthe main purpose of all water
spirits, from what I can gather,is to lure men who have
betrayed, murdered, rejected inany way a young woman, and so
(35:58):
she will lure him into water anddeal with him as she sees fit.
But what is interesting is thatthe water spirits in a lot of
cultures are destined to liveout the rest of their earthly
lives as water spirits.
So this isn't something thatgoes on for thousands and
(36:24):
thousands of years, becausethere are so many little
offshoots about water spiritsthat you could really get into,
which I didn't want to, becauseI felt I really needed to
streamline the story around thespecific problems and concerns
(36:47):
of the community yes, so I.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
I don't want to word it in a way that will give
anything away, but did the waterspirits appear differently to
different people?
Like did they appeardifferently to men?
Speaker 4 (37:11):
Oh, wow, I love that question.
Well, when Orchid first bringsher beloved Jack to see the
water spirits because she's abit of a prankster I think they
both saw the same thing becausehe did recognize one of the
(37:34):
young women.
And now I'm having to go inanother direction here, because
I'm thinking that for a man whois not somebody like Jack
Byszynski, who is, he'sdefinitely not an enemy of the
water spirits and they, I thinkthey, they they feel fairly
generously towards him.
(37:55):
But for the enemies, I wouldsay the water spirits would be
much like the sirens of Greekmyth that are very beautiful and
alluring and they sing and thatsinging pulls men to the side
of the river where they arecaught and pulled under.
So yeah, I think you've reallyhit on an important point there,
(38:19):
paulina.
I think they perhaps do appeardifferently to women than they
do to men, because for women, asone of the characters says,
these are the girls of ourcommunity community and we love
them and we mourn them.
So for them they are youngwomen who are carrying out the
revenge that the living womenwish that they themselves could
(38:42):
carry out against, againstmurderers or the men who abuse
them.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I also had another question, so thank you for
clarifying that, because I wasthinking like maybe, even though
their true you know, even theirtrue form may have been just so
beautiful and sexy at the sametime.
You know what I mean, like younever know with men.
You know what I'm saying.
(39:09):
Yeah, anything that movessometimes okay, so um the theme
of pure novel.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
You should be writing a novel we, we will hopefully
okay yes, yes, do um.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
The theme of pure and impure is so present in the
novel and in some verycomplicated ways, from medical
crisis to love and sex and eventhe character's name.
We would love for you to speakabout that tension in the book,
kind of like muddy meh and stufflike that too.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, book kind of like muddy meh and
stuff like that too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I was brought up with afew very strict ideas and those
were related to, I guess,leaving the the dirty world
outside and the clean worldinside.
So there were certain thingsthat were not done in our
(40:12):
household.
One was related specifically toanimals.
You don't kiss an animal, youdon't let it eat from your dish,
you don't let it walk acrossyour kitchen table or your
kitchen counters, you don'tbring it into the bed with you.
You wash your hands after youhave touched the animal.
(40:33):
No matter how much you lovethat animal, you wash your hands
.
And that's sort of how I grewup.
And oh, food the other thingwas food Don't drop food on the
floor.
If you drop food on the floor,you throw it out floor.
If you drop food on the floor,you throw it out.
And a whole lot of other littlecomponents, sort of offshoots of
(41:00):
those particular practiceswhich come.
I mean, they're quite sensiblepractices because they come from
a period of forest nomadism inwhich you had to keep the dirt
on the outside and thecleanliness on the inside to
avoid getting sick.
You had to be very carefulabout animals, about what you
touched about.
You know whether food fell onthe ground and became
(41:21):
contaminated.
So you know, even though todaya lot of people may not follow
those kinds of practices,practices they did have their
roots in in, I think, very soundideas about cleanliness.
So for um, for orchid, yeah, shekind of extrapolates from this
(41:44):
and she adopts her own puritycodes and, and the purity codes
are essentially things thatreally matter to her in terms of
what she will bring into herlife, what she will accept and
what she will not accept.
What is marimé, what is defiled,and to her the whole idea of
(42:09):
defilement is about thedestruction of the fen by the
mining company, the attacks onwomen by violent men, and in
terms of her life with Jack,even his wounds, when the
(42:31):
attempt is made in his life,make him defiled for a period of
time and I think she wants torecover that.
She wants not recover, but shewants to pass through that so
that again they can have this,what she considers to be a pure,
untouched kind of love.
But so there are those tensionsand particularly socially
(42:57):
you'll find those tensionsbetween someone who practices
purity codes and someone whodoesn't.
And how do you have that personin your life.
So she actually does teach Jackhow to be in the kitchen, how
to be in the house, and that'sone of the things that actually
(43:19):
brings him closer to her mother,because her mother at one point
says I can see that he's, he'suh, he's kind of like a proper
Romany mush.
He's in the kitchen, he'scleaning, he's behaving as he
should.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
I loved that developing relationship between
Jack and the mother and thatpart with him giving her the
binoculars so she could draw themoon.
I was crying, I was like that'sso nice.
He recognized her talent andinterest.
That's right, that's right,that's right.
It was just really.
It was really wholesome andsweet and it wasn't an easy
(43:57):
relationship and I loved that,the way that they softened to
each other.
Um, and I loved his care aboutwanting to make her feel welcome
and comfortable and seen that'sright, that's right, and he and
, and that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
And I think you were mentioning something about the
binoculars and encouraging herto draw the moon, and I think
you know that's another way ofhaving agency is to actually,
when you see something, tointerpret it through your own
eye and your own work, and so Ithink he saw that in her and I
think that really helped tobridge that gap between them.
(44:37):
I think he had to do a lot ofwork and she, mother, had to do
a lot of work too.
Yeah, they met each otherhalfway.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
They met each other halfway, yeah, yeah we have a
(45:10):
kind of heady question next whatwould you like to see happen
for Romani literature movingforward?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
I would like to see.
This is my kind of my utopianidea, which is I would like to
see community organizationsbring people together to start
writing their stories and Iwould like to see not just
writing their stories one mentorwith a Romani writer who is a
(45:43):
mentor.
I think that would be the mostideal thing, because I think we
have to start from the roots up.
(46:04):
So that's one direction I wouldreally like to see Romani
literature going in, becausethat's how so many people in
other cultures have gottenstarted with their writing.
They haven't necessarily goneto university, they haven't
necessarily had contact withwriters, but I think there is a
(46:30):
potential writer in everyone andin fact, when we did this a
small book for the Biennaleproject, the Venice Biennale
project the stories that thosewomen wrote were very beautiful
and very touching and, for them,very empowering.
(46:51):
So I would like to to seesomething like that, um embedded
somehow in a communityorganization yeah, beautiful
idea I love, definitely youagree, I think that model was
very successful in nigeria, andthen there was this boom of
Nigerian writers going reallymainstream.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
So like, yeah, let's do, let's get that done.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
there is there.
There is a prototype fordeveloping this kind of practice
.
Well, you look at Paulo FreireI don't know if I've said his
name right, oh God, I can'tremember the name of his book
but it's about writing for thedispossessed.
(47:37):
I'll have to find the name ofthe book and I will send it to
you.
It's about education and aboutpopular education and really
educating from the body and fromthe experience rather than from
an elevated academicperspective.
Hello Bob, I think there are alot of models like that.
(48:02):
Yeah, he did it actually, Ithink.
Theater of the Dispossessed.
He did it mainly with theater,I think.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
I was just going to say do you think you can share a
little bit with us about yourupcoming novel Nightshade?
Speaker 4 (48:44):
Yes, I will.
Nightshade started out as astory based on the experiences
or inspired by the experiencesof my dad's family.
When they came to story andthat got published in Room
Magazine and a friend said, whydon't you turn that into a novel
?
And I thought, okay, so I did.
I expanded on it and turned itinto a novel and so it's
inspired by the women of myfather's family my aunt, who was
(49:09):
a very strange and eccentrichealer of birds, and my
grandmother and my other aunt.
Nightshade came from a story ofthe same name based on the women
of my dad's family, and it'salso one of these stories that
(49:31):
isn't specifically one kind ofgenre.
It deals with the family ofwomen who came to Canada and who
have brought their puppets withthem, their troop of puppets,
and their puppets are large,they're the size of children.
I could actually take thiscomputer upstairs and show it to
(49:51):
you, show them to you later, orthe one puppet that I have left
.
But so in the story the puppetscome to life.
When the women put on theseperformances they tell the
stories of the oppression thatthe women have faced, the beauty
of their culture, the wholeidea again of revenge, and so
(50:13):
there's kind of a verysupernatural element to the
story, in which we have our reallife of hardship working in the
tobacco fields.
The young woman who's theprotagonist of the story works
for the wife of the wealthyowner of a tobacco farm and she
(50:34):
becomes very enchanted with theidea of leading a non-Romany
life having blonde hair, havingjewelry, having a life of luxury
in a huge house and at the sametime she begins to develop a
very dark attraction to thehusband, and this is in
(50:56):
opposition to what her motherand her aunts believe, that the
family really needs to be heldtogether.
So it's a struggle for herbetween her family life and her
devotion to her family and thepuppets and her desire to enter
the world of the dominantculture, the non-romantic world
(51:17):
that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I can't wait.
We also love to ask who is yourRomani crush, a Romani person
you really admire and you wantthe listeners to know about.
Speaker 4 (51:31):
Oh well, I can say there are a number of people,
but one person who really comesto the forefront is Mihaela
Dragan and her theater company,juvli Pen.
Speaker 3 (51:46):
We love her.
Speaker 4 (51:46):
They do such wonderful work.
I think she's a brilliantwriter, she's a brilliant actor,
she's fearless, she'sprincipled, she doesn't take
shit, and I really admire that.
She's just amazing.
And the theater company doessome pretty terrific work as
(52:07):
well, and I would really like tosee small theater groups like
this springing up arounddifferent countries.
Oh yeah, the work that they'redoing is so valuable, yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
It's truly remarkable .
They're pioneering so much andshe's a wonderful person.
We're really happy.
She was our second interviewever, so, listeners, you can go
back and listen.
We probably sounded a littlebit scared because we really
knew it, but she's just so great.
Speaker 4 (52:39):
Yeah, oh, I was just going to say also, another
person that was really importantin my life was Ron Lee no
relation.
I met him when I was, I guess,quite a few years ago and got
involved through him with RomaCommunity Center and ended up on
the board and we became verygood friends.
(53:00):
He was like a mentor for me andI really appreciated his, his
perspective on everything.
You know, he was not a sexist,he was a feminist.
He he believed in inalienablehuman rights.
For all that, human rightscould not be cherry picked.
(53:20):
He had an internationalistperspective.
He was really an extraordinaryperson.
So that's somebody that I stillcarry with me in my life and it
was so sad to see him go.
Yeah, yeah.
We lost such an important personand I remember thinking, even
(53:41):
as he was old and getting veryfrail, that I thought what are
we going to do without him?
But I think he he left enoughof a legacy of his own strength
and his own incrediblegenerosity that we are doing
well and it's um.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
for many people it's thanks to him oh yeah, he
continues to be an inspiration.
I felt very fortunate that thatwe corresponded a little bit
and I really loved therelationship that we had, mostly
over email and Facebook.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
He was just so a true mentor, like just such a
wonderful, generous, brilliantspirit really we had a lot of
dinner parties here, and when hewent to Toronto to do
interpretation for refugeeclaims, he would stay here at
the house and so we would be upuntil two in the morning talking
(54:34):
.
He had such energy, he's hadsuch energy.
I wish a lot of young peoplewould have had that energy.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Yeah, yeah, he's a special one.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:52):
So how can people best find you and support your
work?
You could go to my website,which is lynnhutchinsonleeca
L-Y-N-N-H-U-T-C-H-I-N-S-O-Nca.
You can go to Stelliform Press,which would be
wwwstelliformpress, I guess comor ca.
(55:14):
Stelliform is spelledS-T-E-L-L-I-F-O-R-M, and that's
where you can find the novellaOrchid.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
Wonderful.
Yeah, we'll put links in theshow notes and um, I can send
you links.
Speaker 4 (55:31):
I can send you links and there's all yeah, but you'll
find that information certainlyon my website and I'll send you
the stelliform link as wellwonderful.
Speaker 3 (55:39):
Yeah, everyone.
Go buy the book, request it atyour library, request it at your
library, request it at yourfavorite bookstore.
That's the best way for writersto be supported is even if you
can't buy it, ask for places tocarry it.
It really makes a difference.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
They do have an American distributor too, I
believe.
Oh, amazing.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
If you read it, leave a really good review.
Wherever you know you canreview books, it really makes a
huge difference.
Thank you so much, lynn, forspeaking with us.
It's just such a joy Like welove you.
We love your book.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Thank you for doing great.
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
So lovely.
I love you too, and I loveRomanistan.
I think you do wonderful work.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
Thank you so much, thank you for listening to
romanistan podcast you can findus on instagram t TikTok and
(56:47):
Facebook at Romanistan Podcastand on Twitter at RomanistanPod.
To support us, join our Patreonfor extra content or just
donate to our Ko-Fi fundraiser,ko-ficom backslash Romanistan,
and please rate, review andsubscribe.
It helps people find our show.
(57:07):
It helps us so much.
Speaker 2 (57:09):
You can follow Jez on Instagram at jasminavantila and
Paulina at romaniholistic.
You can get our book Secrets ofRomani Fortune Telling online
or wherever books are sold.
Visit romanistanpodcastcom forevents, educational resources
and more.
Email us at romanistanpodcastat gmailcom for inquiries.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Von Tila and Paulina
Stevens, conceived of by PaulinaStevens, edited by Victor
Pachas, with music by VictorPachas and artwork by Elijah
Bardo.
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