Greek/American Identifications, Personal Routes

Words, practices, ethos, performances, material culture, rhythms, and rhymes pulling me into affective and political identifications with Greek/America

• Ethos (Devotion, Determination, Hard Work, Writing and Cultural Activism as Vocation)

     Greek American scholars and authors working

     well into their youthful old age contributing to 

     the understanding of Greek America (Thomas

     Doulis, Dan Georgakas, Helen Papanikolas, 

     Harry Mark Petrakis, Elaine Thomopoulos)

• Family

     I never loved my father the way I loved him at

     that moment (a paraphrase, until I locate the

     exact statement)

     [Johnny Otis about his Greek immigrant father

     attending Otis’s wedding ceremony (amidst his

     mother’s resolute opposition) with Phyllis

     Walker, an interracial union.]

• “Folk Heritage”

     “Every argument has a rebuttal (O logos ehei

      antilogo)” [frequent saying by a woman in a

      family connected with Greek/American

      migration, early 1910s] (1)

• Labor

     Immigrant waiters and dishwashers in U.S.

     Greek restaurants

• Memoir / Personal Recollections

     “Unfortunately, the occasional experience of

      even the best of Greek folk life isn’t enough to

      constitute an identity or a way of life. If that 

      was all there was to it, it would have been

      better to get away and leave it all behind as

      many did. …

      One day, when I was in my early teens, I went

      into a bookstore and saw a book entitled The

      Greek Passion sitting next to the cash register.

      It was the first time I’d seen a book with the

      name of a living Greek on it. The clerk told me

      a Greek priest had ordered it but hadn’t come

      to pick it up. Our priest, the only one for all of

      Montana, had died of a heart attack a few

      weeks earlier, so I offered to buy it. It’s hard to

      explain the effect the novel had on me. I was

      actually in contact with a real Greek author,

      someone at least as well educated as the

      people who taught me in school. And the book

      was a lot more interesting and relevant to me

      than most of the literature we were assigned to

      read” (2).

• Music

     “I Rather Set Myself on Fire,” Anna Paidoussi

      and Acroama – at 4:00

• Poetry–Bilingualism–Translation

Poet George Economou performs his translation of Michalis Katsaros' poem “Those you see”/Aftous pou vlepeis.

• Politics of Religion

     “What our struggle for theosis most demands is

     a politics of empathy. What can this look like?

     … In imagining what it is like to be in the body

     of a Black person in the USA, perhaps we can

     see more clearly the structures in place that

     facilitate the inequality among persons. Those

     Orthodox Christians who say that Blacks

     should just “improve their culture” (yes—I’ve

     heard this), do not have a sufficiently

     theological understanding of sin and its

     insidious and lingering social effects. Is it

     really that easy, as an example, to will a better

     life for those who find themselves judged

     unemployable for a job or unworthy of a

     promotion because of their skin color–much as

     some Orthodox Christians in a not so distant

     past?” (3).

• Scholarship

     “Good literature requires good criticism, which

     combines an appreciative grasp of an author’s

     gift with a critical understanding of its effects

     on readers and a probing eye for what lies

     beyond” (4).

• Translation

     “First the shipyards in New York gave way, fell

     to their knees and dragged into their effluence

     two and a half thousand workers, the books

     couldn’t be balanced unless new orders came

     in, and whatever the wartime industry had built

     with zeal during those years of conflict and

     unrest was quickly destroyed by the popular

     demand for a new world, a better, more

     peaceful world, and a year or two later, after

     Nixon assumed the reins of power, the RCA

     Victor plant closed, too, and that music-loving

     terrier set its sights on Mexico and cheap labor,

     with management blaming the unions, which

     had been on indefinite strike seeking better 

     wages, and the unions blaming management for

     putting profits above everything else, and the

     whole city was left bereft of jobs, five thousand

     people fired in a single week in a city of ninety

     thousand, and thus in the mid-70s the diner that

     had been renamed 'Ariadne,' with the name

     Mickievitch still visible underneath, and the

     off-white columns painted above the colorful 

     Greek Salad and the mouthwatering Gyro

     Plate, stopped being what it was and promised

     to be, as the decline in free enterprise and the

     continuing war in Vietnam drove the city into

     crisis and residents in the jumble of

     neighborhoods became distrustful, and

     whoever remained in the recently thriving city

     moved to the burgeoning suburbs, first the

     Jews, then the Italians and Greeks, while her

     parents, her very own parents, remained

     immutably optimistic, and in their optimism

     immutably unmoving, sunk their heels in like

     mules and watched as their savings blew away
     on the wind, and their dreams vanished once

     and for all” (5)

• Writing

     “Or so the oppressive elements in Greek and

     Greek American circles would have me

     believe. For in fact I have much more—as a

     Greek, a Greek with the gift of an education, I

     have great riches, and access to a long tradition

     of Greekness that has a very colorful history of

     gender dualism and hybridity, one that was

     eliminated from the tired single story. What I

     do not have is the right to cede to nationalists,

     and to essentialist discourses, all power over

     what it means to be Greek. It is my

     responsibility to help keep alive the memory of

     that richness, keep the definition of Greekness

     wide.” (6)

• Photography

     Spaces of Greek America, by ARC,

• Material Culture

     Louis Tikas, in Colorado

Sources

(1) Efthalia Makris Walsh. 2000. Beloved Sister: Biography Of A Greek-American Family, Letters From The Homeland, 1930-1948. Tegea Press. P. 43.

(2) E. D. Karampetsos. 2005. “Preface.” Charioteer: An Annual Review of Modern Greek Culture, Special issue, The Greek American Experience, Guest Editor, E. D. Karampetsos, No. 43: 5–8.

(3) Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Racism: An Orthodox Perspective,” Public Orthodoxy, January 18, 2018, accessed March 5, 2018,

(4) Artemis Leontis. 2003. “‘What Will I Have to Remember?’ Helen Papanikolas’s Art of Telling.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora Vol. 29 (2), 25.

(5) Karen Emmerich. 2017. Excerpts from the novel Dendrites [by Kallia Papadaki]. 28 December. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.

(6) Joanna Eleftheriou. 2019. “Black Stone.” 25 August. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters.