Romani

South Pacific, December 1999 To be a Romanian writer (therefore in the minority) in New Zealand! Ibi patria, ubi – wife. In New Zealand, I think about the confluence of our lives. We come from so far apart, we meet unexpectedly, we link our lives, our fates together.

Some words are graceless. Among them, I would list the word minority without any hesitation. When somebody says I am a minority member, I take offense, no matter what that person might give me in exchange. If we consider the human body, the heart and the brain form minorities,

Excerpts The oldest findings prove the presence of Armenians on the present territory of Romania, more precisely in Moldavia, in an inscription on a tombstone in Cetatea Alba, dated 967 AD. The Hungarian chroniclers Simon Kesay and Thuroczi recorded that, under Duke Geza

When I was asked to write these lines, I thought I had got it wrong, or they had gone to the wrong person. Writing about Ştefan Agopian and Bedros Horasangian (I give their names in alphabetical order, but who knows what may come out of it, you're never too sure with

The literature of minorities? Literature has always belonged to a minority. Even the one that claims to be the spokesperson for a majority is still addressed to a minority. Because usually, and these days this is even more obvious than before, readers only represent a minority,

excerptStanding in front of the Corso building on Calea Victoriei one day, he felt someone's familiar gaze follow him from across the street, as if to catch his eye. He crossed over, as though answering a call, and discovered a picture of Ann among several other portraits

The Jewish problem is not only a problem of the absolute Mathematician; it is one of the whole mankind. The first Christian commentators of the Pentateuch kept calling the attention to the mistake of registering the Scripture to the letter. Certainly, the Jews in Moses'

The idea to bring together in one volume (be it even one issue of a prestigious publication) excerpts from the works of ethnic minority writers seems to me generous and even necessary. From the very beginning, one characteristic distinction appears useful to me. Since this

When King Béla of Hungary decided to invite the Saxons to settle in Transylvania, the land had been severely depopulated by the Mongol invasion. The Germans came from the dry lands of Northern Europe and found here what must have seemed to them sort of a Promised Land.

In Romania, no less than 18 minorities live alongside the majority population, having more or less weight. This has favored – especially in some cases – a very interesting and significant cultural melting pot process, the birth of an extremely rich and diversified cultural

Four years ago, in June 1996, the World Conference on Language Rights held its session in Barcelona, the capital of the Spanish region Catalonia. As the result of several years' work of preparations, the Universal Declaration of Language Rights was adopted here. PEN,

Historical circumstances have made Romania – before and after the great union of 1918 – a country with various ethnic minorities, some very old: Hungarians, since about the end of the first millennium; Armenians, Gypsies, Greeks, and Germans – since the Middle Ages;