“Ich bin eine Wurzel aus Österreich”: location and national identity in Austro-Romany author Ceija Stojka's "Wir leben im Verborgenen" (1988) and "Reisende auf dieser Welt" (1992)

"Wir leben im Verborgenen" (1988) and "Reisende auf dieser Welt" (1992) is a double-volume memoir by Austrian Romni and Holocaust survivor Ceija Stojka. In this work, she revisits the horrors of imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbrck, and Bergen-Belsen while concurrently describing the aftereffects and problems of reintegration to Austrian society after the Holocaust. Although she writes as a traveling Romni, she also demonstrates her belonging in Austria through her identification with various Austrian locations. She connects Roma memory to sites of Austrian cultural heritage, yet she also links her identity to sites of exclusion from Austrian society. In recognizing a range of Austrian sites as moments of both inclusion and rejection, she transforms them into sites of shared Austro-Romany memory. In this sense, location is a key element in the way Stojka writes about her identity in Wir leben im Verborgenen and Reisende auf dieser Welt, since it gives her a flexibility to practice both cultures, yet still belong to Austria.