+ There was a strong sense in this book that the Roma purposefully hold themselves aloof from any sense of history as a survival tactic. Most communities until very recently only paid attention as far back as the memory of the oldest members of their communities. They had no real interest in where they came from (a perpetual obsession of gadje--non-Roma people) and would happily create narratives that served them in the moment (see: them embracing claims that their origins were in Egypt, a place that the people they lived among at least had some sense of, unlike India). This resulted in subsequent generations post-Holocaust (called "the Devouring" among Roma) having no real idea that they were even targeted for extermination. I think this has changed quite a bit in the last thirty years as a real sense of Roma solidarity and pan-national community has emerged, but it was the case when the book was written.

Reading this, to be honest what this reminds me of is the queer community, though this is because the constant churn of people in the community means that institutional memory is either extremely short, nonexistent, or actively destroyed. It seems like in every generation there's a new explanation for "where queer people come from" and some choose to embrace it and some rebel against it and a lot use it as a convenient way to get people to leave them alone.

Like on my first readthrough I was surprised at this

A note about terminology: there's an afterward by the author that was written in the mid-2000s that talks about how, when she was writing the book, Gypsy was still the preferred word for Roma, even amongst themselves, but since that time, they've started to reject it as a slur and embraced the term Roma. I appreciated this context and her acknowledgement.

but considering the aforementioned similarities, the quick turnaround in vocabulary is unsurprising.