Oksana Marafioti: Translating Identities

Language use is the consequence of certain dynamics in people’s lives. It is obvious that translation implies, even etymologically, movement, mobility, exchange. These phenomena are more topical than ever nowadays, in the age of globalization. In the present essay, I analyze the translation of identities in the work of Oksana Marafioti, a contemporary writer of Roma origins who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States of America. Her memoir American Gypsy is an effort to trans-late towards a multiple, volatile, fluid identity where the languages spoken by Marafioti lead to belongings and rejections. The author records, in exquisite wording, the painful process of translating from a culture to another culture, from a language to another language.