Roma attitudes and how to present us in your writing.
The top of this piece primarily discusses negative stereotypes in writings, so you can understand why these aren’t really true, and the bottom has a header which you can read to see how to present us as we are.
Do I think this piece will be groundbreaking? Absolutely not. Do I hope this piece will prevent AT LEAST one writer from making a common mistake in their writing? Absolutely.
I want to start of with Roma Family Loyalty. This is something people are eager to show in their writing, presenting family units as something that is powerful and strong, which is great. However, like all families, we have limits.
A popular mistake in Peaky Blinder fanfiction is the misuse of this loyalty. It’s not shown in celebration, we don’t see Roma characters celebrating character achievements to the small things like better results in school and moving up in a business.
However, what we do see is family loyalty in a way that portrays us as violent. We read about a family member killing a character, and don’t see the backlash the character should receive. We don’t see the distrust you now feel for that person, we don’t see the problems that now arise. Violence committed by Roma is such a common topic in fan-fiction, when in fact, it is very rare.
Of course, the Peaky Blinders series is filled with blood, guns and knives but it’s also filled with Aunt Pol’s love of God, it’s filled with Arthur’s character change, it has Ada’s moving on from old family ways for a better life for herself and her children. All things that would’ve been celebrated.
A Roma family would’ve been ecstatic to see the change in Arthur. It would’ve been celebrated and praised, not pushed off and ignored. It’s not something that happened over night, it required dedication and support from those closest.
You often see scenes in “Shelby Sister” series where the Shelby Sister in question is afraid of Aunt Pol and Tommy because she gets beat. When this too, isn’t a reality.
Of course, it does still happen, and I don’t want to dismiss ANYONE who is a victim of this time of punishment, however, in Roma it’s extremely uncommon. (We are more creative).
When in the series has Aunt Pol been portrayed as someone who beats Finn as punishment? When Finn smoked that cigarette, he received a tap to the head and a word later. He was not beaten, so why is it done in fiction?
Roma families protect their family, they do not beat them. (Still not trying to dismiss anyone who was a child beat by their Roma family, this is just an in general <3). DESPITE the times they lived in where this was considered normal.
We are not genetically violent. We do not grow and and think “guns are okay”. In our world, they are not. At the time, everybody owned a gun, however, we knew the consequences of using one. It wasn’t a first option, nor was it really an option at all.
We do not sell family members. This one is a BIG one for me.
We do not get in debt with another Roma family and offer daughters to solve that debt. We speak to them… Like everyone else? I’m not sure where selling Roma children has come from.
We do not offer out children to random Roma families. We do not meet a wealthy Roma man and think, “yes, I will sell my daughter to him”.
Yes, we do have a history of arranged marriages, and they do still happen today, within reason. We do not marry happy people with happy relationships. We do not marry people who do not want a partner. We do not marry people because they’re “too crazy”.
We marry people with what’s best for them. We ask people what is that family like? Where do they travel? Is there any significant history in that family I should be aware of? Families spend MONTHS even YEARS getting to know the other family beforehand, asking around and getting to know them.
Esme and John was a one off thing, and was a marriage I don’t believe was presented right. The Shelby’s and Lee’s were already familiar with each other, having spent years of connections. Esme needed a husband, and John needed a wife. Esme was not quickly given away at convenience, do you truly think families would allow that??
Our whole lives do not revolve around spirituality and thinking we are being followed by ghosts. We do not live in a constant state of paranoia — it’s unrealistic.
Of course, we dabble into it once in a while, we explore what we can’t see and test the waters, but we are not running around believing there is a bad omen behind us.
Honestly, I do believe this is also something exaggerated in people when writing. We don’t sit and analyse you when we first meet you, but we do try to find out about you before we begin sharing details of ourselves.
We don’t go, “oh, she scratched her nose, she’s a pathological liar”, but we do go, “he’s quite fidgety, perhaps he’s uncomfortable”.
Yet we do still make mistakes, we are not upper beings who know all and do all. We do still make bad friends, and become close with people we do not truly know, despite the fact we thought we knew them.
We do still get in arguments and upsetting conversations, we are not immune to emotions.
I’ll be blunt and honest, we do still make mistakes. We will still get in silly fights, we do still push people a little bit too far, which is normal, we are all human, no?
Roma feel emotions, we get sad when our day isn’t going right, and feel happy when our dinner came out perfectly cooked. We feel love for those closest to us, and feel an intense amount of care for them.
We have friends, lots of friends. Sometimes they’re only Roma friends, other times we meet them in primary school.
We have family celebrations, where we thank musicians by licking money (notes 💴) and sticking them to their foreheads.
We have horses, often not many but us usually a family will have one.
We are not natural riders. Of course we do pick it up quite quickly, having seen those around us do it so often, however we do make mistakes. We do fall off our horses, and we get upset when we do, because it hurts and we’re human. We do have good days with our horses, where we are content and happy.
We make AMAZING meals with cabbage, this could be a whole post in itself. However, we aren’t too good with cooking bread, (for some odd reason?).
We sit with our families and talk about our days. Yes there is secrets, but we do still discuss “why on earth have they changed that shop?”
Just remember when writing us, we are regular human beings, and I think you’ll do okay! <3
