Sandra Jayat (born c.1939) is a French writer and artist of Romani descent. She left her nomadic family at age 15. She travelled on her own to Italy and Paris. She became associated with the surviving family of Django Reinhardt. In Paris, she was encouraged by the writers Marcel Aymé and Jean Cocteau, plus as an artist by Chagall and Picasso. She published many works of literature documenting the experience of Romanies in France and has advocated on behalf of Roma and Sinti at the international level, and is a recognized artist whose work has featured in well regarded exhibitions. She currently resides in Paris.
Early life
Jayat was born on the Italian–French border in 1938/1939 (some sources say 1940) to a nomadic family of (arguably Italian) Manouche Roma who were transiting at the time from Italy to France to escape the wartime persecution of Roma that was occurring in Italy. Finding that Roma were equally persecuted in northern France in the same period, the family moved on to southern France where conditions were less severe, and by the time Sandra was 14 were to be found back in north Italy in the Lombardy region, specifically in an encampment on the banks of Lake Maggiore.
On the eve of her fifteenth birthday it was announced that in accordance with the clan tradition she would be married to another Roma boy. The prospect terrified her and she decided to run away. Her grandfather had told her of the clan's "cousin", Django Reinhardt, a famous Romani guitarist, who lived in Paris, and she resolved to travel on her own to Paris in order to try to find him. The young girl traveled on her own overland to Paris over a period of many months, surviving, despite many hostilities, via the assistance of other Roma encampments along the way plus the kindness of strangers on occasion.
Upon her arrival in Paris in spring 1955 she discovered that Django had in fact died two years previously. However, she encountered a Jewish family of whom the mother had lost a child in a concentration camp during the second world war and who believed that Jayat was her child who had come back to her, and Jayat lived with this family until she could not stand the deception any longer. She claims to have eventually made contact with Django's surviving family and to have been accepted as an honorary daughter by the family, maintaining her connection with the family for a number of years.
Career
Although she spoke two languages (Italian and Romani) at the time she arrived in Paris, she soon taught herself French. Jayat was unable to read and write at that point, since the children of the clan had never attended school; however, over the next few years she taught herself to read and write in French and began to write poetry. She also began to produce drawings/paintings, which caused her to come to the attention of prominent Parisian writers and artists of the day, the latter including Picasso and Chagall, her early work somewhat resembling that of the latter artist in particular.
Writing
In 1961 she published a book of her book of poems entitled Herbes manouches ("Manouche Grass") with a cover design provided by the poet and visual artist Jean Cocteau with a preface by the French author J.-B. Cayeux; a second collection entitled Lunes nomades ("Nomad Moons") appeared in 1963, and a third Moudravi: où va l'amitié ("Moudravi: Where Friendship Goes") in 1966, including a cover designed by Marc Chagall.
She also showcased the work of others, co-presenting (with Jean-Pierre Rosnay) a 1963 volume entitled Poèmes pour ce temps (Poems for This Time) which featured the work of other young Parisian writers. While, in the words of Barrera, her first two volumes of poetry contained a sequence of images about Romani life and customs, her third volume was "a much more profound humanistic reflection on personal relations".
In the 1970s she produced two stories for children, Kourako and Les deux lunes de Savyo ("The Two Moons of Savyo"). In the words of Barrera:
Commencing in 1978, she produced four partly autobiographical novels: La Longue Route d'une Zingarina (The long road of a Zingarina) (1978), El romanes (The Romani elder) (1986), Les Racines du temps (The roots of time) (1998) and La Zingarina ou l'herbe sauvage (The Zingarina in the wild grass) (2010). Of her 1978 book, Barrera López wrote in 2020:
El romanès recounted the adventures of Romanino "El Romanès", a Spanish Romani man, during World War II, while regarding her next novel: