Nightshade’s Romany Roots:
How a Childhood Story Became the Heart of a Novel

The Story Begins

I’m seven years old. I ask Daddy to put on a show, and he brings the puppet down from the attic.
She’s ancient, with chipped paint, a ragged dress, ratty grey hair. She’s almost as tall as I am.
Daddy settles her on his knee, slides his hand into her back, pulls the gears that open her mouth,
and her story begins.

I don’t remember the story. I don’t remember any of the stories she tells over the years. What I
remember is being pulled into her world.

Over 70 years later, she’s the beating heart of my novel Nightshade.

The Background: My Father’s Romany Family

My dad and his Romany family were from Lancashire, England. They were entertainers,
travelling in their vardo (caravan), putting on shows wherever they could. My dad played the
violin. His father carved and painted the wooden horses for carousels.

They came to Canada around 1907, settling in Southwestern Ontario, where they worked on
the tobacco farms and travelled with their small troupe of puppets, entertaining audiences in
the region. My brother remembered them performing at the garden parties of wealthy tobacco
farmers.

My dad taught himself to read and write. He moved to Hamilton to study art, and became a
celebrated printmaker, documenting the depression in Southern Ontario.

On a trip to England, my sister Rhoda met with cousin Iris, who told of the family vardo decorated with mirrors, and abandoned during WW2, with the family settling around London and Manchester.

Underpinnings

I write these details from my family history because they were essential for Nightshade’s
underpinnings, characters, and events. Over 120 years old, the puppet of my childhood is the
guardian of our household and the inspiration for Nightshade’s grandmother puppet Puri Dai
(Old Mother, or Grandmother). My children played with her ferociously, causing her hands to
separate from her arms, her hair to fall off, and one eye to become detached. Her straw
stuffing sometimes falls to the ground, so that when we carry her now we need to protect
every part of her body. Nevertheless, as fragile as she is, she’ll outlive us for generations.

I started my serious writing career ten years ago, at age 69. Why did I wait so long? I was a
painter and multidisciplinary artist, and I’d never given myself permission to write. But I began,
tentatively, with a spoken word piece for chirikli collective’s sound installation commissioned
for the Roma Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. When I did begin to write and get published,

it was mainly speculative fiction leaning slightly into horror. I’d never considered writing about
my dad’s family, or about the puppets, till my friend and colleague Nina Munteanu (celebrated
author of eco-fiction) said one day, Why don’t you write about them?

Romany Stories

We need to tell Romany stories! As is frequently said in the Romany community, “Nothing
about us without us.” In Canada, Romanies are an ‘invisible’ population, making us vulnerable
to pernicious or exoticizing myths and stereotypes, in both day-to-day experiences and in
literature, film, visual arts, and so on. Romanies are significantly underrepresented in the
Canadian literary canon, with — as far as I know — only one published novel (Goddam Gypsy;
reprinted as E Zhivindi Yag / The Living Fire by Ronald Lee – no relation) and a poetry collection,
Parramisha (by Frances Roberts Reilly, Cinnamon Press.)

From Words on a Page to a Story to a Novel

Nina planted the seed. I made some notes and started with a short story, “Nightshade”,
published in Room. Then the story began to swell, and grew into a novel. The more I wrote, the
more vital, loving, stern and complicated Puri Dai became. The novel’s women are loosely
fashioned after my grandmother and aunts in the story of a young woman’s struggle, of what
Romani author Oksana Marafioti calls in her blurb a “desire to be seen — by wealth, by power
— (that) meets the fierce love and warning of Romany women who know the cost.”

An excerpt from Nightshade won the 2022 Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for
the 2023 Stockholm Writers’ Festival Prize, with the full manuscript shortlisted for the Guernica
Prize. I’d never imagined this small family story would see the world, and for this I’m grateful to
my publishers at Assembly Press. A grant from the Ontario Arts Council gave me the time to
complete the manuscript and go through several iterations of the editing process.

Gathered from childhood memories, stories recounted, and the presence of Puri Dai always
guiding us, for me Nightshade is deeper than words. It runs in my blood.