Ergon: Five-Year Anniversary

This October, Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters celebrates its five years of operation. Ergon started as a joint project, launched in collaboration with Martha E. Klironomos whose ideas and vision have left an indelible imprint in the journal. The conversation started in 2014, and the fist essay was posted on October 30, 2017. Her intellectual presence is still with us.

Since then, we have published a total of 188 postings under a variety of categories ranging from archive building to book review essays, tributes to translations, and essays to editorials among others.

Ergon is vested in sustaining a space hospitable to non-normative voices, critical analysis and reflective appreciation of scholarship and the arts. It does so in a multitude of genres––essays, blogs, interviews, memoirs, book reviews, articles, visual culture, editorials, and translations. We believe it offers an important platform for empowering diaspora studies and asserting a critical presence, sorely needed, in public life. Though the initial focus has been Greek America we will soon be expanding our scope to incorporate conversations across intellectual and academic networks in the Greek diasporas. The new title, Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters will reflect this broadened purview.

In our endeavor we have enjoyed immense support from scholars who have worked tirelessly as book review and poetry editors. (Christopher Bakken, Frank Hess, Neovi Karakatsanis, Gerasimus Katsan.)

Academics working within the broader U.S. modern Greek studies as well as Greek Australian and Greek Canadian studies have responded to our invitation, contributing editorial and critical insights, book reviews, essays, articles and blogs for us. For this we express our deepest appreciation.

Greek American studies involves a relatively small demographic of practitioners. But this community intersects with U.S. modern Greek studies in our shared transnational orientation involving the signifier “Greek.”

We hope that the support we have received will continue, even increase, to further our joined interests. We call on modern Greek studies scholars in film and cultural studies, anthropology, foodways, literature, and the arts, in particular, among other fields and disciplines, to contribute to our mission. A quality blog, an insightful essay, or a thoughtful book review essay from scholars who operate “outside” diaspora studies but are positioned to engage with diaspora matters can make a world of difference. We have enjoyed this kind of contributions and fully recognize their value. Sophisticated work functions as a springboard for further research projects.

Throughout the years, Ergon has received generous grants from the Modern Greek Studies Association (MGSA) and the Ohio State University. We have also enjoyed financial support from friends and individuals. For this, we thank you. Given that we operate as an open access platform with a limited budget, we ask you to take a moment on this occasion and consider supporting our project.

Visit us at https://ergon.scienzine.com/page/about

My hope is that health and the availability of resources will enable us to celebrate our tenth anniversary, in 2027.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Writing for the Community: Penelope Karageorge’s Poetry: Belonging to New York City and Lemnos

After living in the United States for more than 35 years, I now connect with two cultures. Writing in two languages, I find meaning in my American, Greek American, and Greek lives. When I am in Columbus, I miss my Greek friends. When I find myself in Thessaloniki, I miss the OSU library. To be a Greek American is to live the complexities of dual affiliation.

To understand this complexity, I regularly turn to fellow travelers who write about their Greek American journeys. I particularly love reading diaspora poetry for its power to evoke the nuances and subtleties of dual belonging.

In this piece, I turn to the poetry of Penelope Karageorge. A resident of Manhattan who spends her summers in her grandmother’s home on the island of Lemnos, Karageorge utilizes both the American cosmopolis—New York City—and the ancestral village—Lichna—as settings to explore questions of belonging. Her insights spark reflection. Both NYC and Lichna are felt acutely as homes but are not idealized. They may offer deeply moving connections but also frustrating experiences.

New York generates ambivalence. It is both an exhilarating and challenging place to live. Everyday experiences, like riding the elevator, can be suffocating, straining one’s sense of private space:

“Life instantly becomes small as a steel box, / body pulled up straight, fork in the drawer, / and nothing extra’s allowed in, nose to back, / clutching pocketbook, only eyes move.”

In her “New York Love Letter: P.S. You’re Crazy,” the poet expresses—stanza after stanza—her grievances about the city, only to conclude about its power to still pull her to it:

“Talk about egocentricity. Actors. poets, / painters, kooks bulge out / . . . / New York you overdo “new.” New. New. New. / You make me nervous. /. . . / Your personality is driving me up the wall. / Adjust, please. / If you do, I suppose I might leave you.”

Spending time in the ancestral village can also be challenging. A Greek American may know the language and have a general understanding of Greek culture, but decoding Greek everyday interactions may strain one’s sense of belonging:

“… cousin Emmanuel comes to / borrow my step-ladder to inspect his newly / acquired house for water damage, / . . . / Or just anxious, perhaps, off-balance / about life away from Summit, New Jersey. / He knows the language, but with his American / psyche, can’t read the signs. I warn him / to be careful on the ladder. He could fall— / and tumble into a Greek nightmare, or dream.”

The Lemnos ancestral home, which the poet inherited from her grandmother Sevasti, looms large in Karageorge’s poetry. The home still bears traces—albeit feign (smells in linens)—of the deceased grandmother, compelling the poet’s desire for tangible connections with her beloved yiayia.

“When I return to my Greek house in the village / of Lichna, the stones await me. / I swallow them with salt and greens and weep. / Yiayia, I live in your house. Exile. Reject. / Abandoned by your husband, you embroidered tears / into linen. . . . / Yiayia, I came to rescue you, . . . / [you] who was forced to cook for occupying Nazis, / who died alone on my birthday while / I crayoned pictures of you in Newburgh, New York.”

“In my grandmother’s house / I play with ghosts, / lick baclava off windowsills. / Embroidered dreams / weave and unweave. / . . . / Yia yia yia yia yia yia / I’ll wear your gold-rimmed / glasses, and drink / from your bittersweet cup.” (“Baklava Dream.”)

Karageorge’s poetry explores a powerful dimension of the diaspora experience: connecting with more than one place. In her verse, belonging to the ancestral village involves an emotional connection with a beloved ancestor and frustrations due to cross-cultural misunderstandings. Belonging to NYC can be intense but an experience dotted by the absence of beloved relatives and the stimulating senses and culture of the island. Belonging to the Greek village and the American cosmopolis is always partial but enticingly powerful.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Ethos Magazine, Autumn 2022

Charles Moskos (partial bibliography, early 1970s to 1998)

Looking at some files from graduate school (1992-1999), I came across this bibliography about the work of sociologist Charles Moskos:

1973. Review of monographs on the sociology of Greek Americans. Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 2 (1):82–83. [Reprinted as "The Sociology of Greek Americans," Epitheorisis Koinonikon Erevnon [The Greek Journal of Social Research], Vol. 14, pp. 210–21. Reprinted in Hellenic Chronicle, Feb. 22, 1973, p. 8.?]

1974. “Spiro Agnew and Greek Americans: A Hero's Rise and Fall,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, p. 22. [Reprinted in Athens News, June 12, 1974, p. 7.]

1976. “The Greek Experience in America.” Balkan Studies. Vol. 17 (1): 391–96.

1977. “Growing Up Greek American.” Society. Vol. 14 (2): 64–71.
[Reprinted in Jeanne Guillemin, ed., Anthropological Realities, New Brunswick, N.J. Transaction, 1981, pp. 387–400.]

1978. “Greek Americans.” E Kypros Mas, August, pp. 22–33.

1980. “Greeks Abroad: A Comparative Survey.” E Kypros Mas, August, pp. 14–21.

1980. “Theodore Saloutos: An Appreciation,” Hellenic Journal, Dec. 25, 10–12.

1982. “Greek-American Studies.” In The Greek American Community in Transition. Harry J. Psomiades and Alice Scourby, eds., 17–64 [?]. N.Y.:
Pella.

1984. “Greek Orthodox Youth Today: A Sociological Perspective.” In Greek Orthodox Youth Today. N. Michael Vaporis, ed., 11–36. Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Press.

1985. “Hellenic Letters and Their Impact on Greek-American Studies.” In Essays in Tribute to Hellenic Letters. Fotios K. Litsas, ed., 195–200.
Chicago: Modern Greek Studies Series.

1985. “The Greek American Mosaic.” Greek Accent, July/August, pp. 28–32.

1986. “Remembering Saloutos,” Greek Accent, July/August, pp. 11, 48.

1987. “Georgakas on Greek Americans: A Response,” The Greek American, Jan. 17, pp. 7–11. [Reprinted in the Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, Vol. 14 (1987), Spring/Summer, pp. 55–62.]

1988. Review of Aimilia-Emily: Georgios-George by Helen Z. Papanikolas in Theofanis G. Stavrou, ed., 397–399. Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, Vol. 3, 1987.]

1989. “Greeks.” In Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. William Ferris and Charles Wilson, eds., 322–23. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

1989. “The Modern Greek Orthodox Church in American.” Journal of Modern Hellenism, No. 6, p. 9–17.

1989. “Archdiocesan Theological Agenda: Social Realities.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review. Vol. 34 (3) (Fall): 300–06.

1989. “Greek America in the 1980s,” The Greek American, December 23-30, pp. 4–5.

1992. “Greek Americans in Politics.” The AHI Network News (Fall), pp. 1–2.

1993. “Faith, Language, and Culture,” In Project for Orthodox Renewal. Steven J. Sfikas and George E. Matsoukas, eds., 17–32. Chicago: Orthodox Christian Laity.

1997. “Greeks.” In American Immigrant Cultures. David Levinson and Melvin Ember, eds., 334–42. N.Y.: Simon and Schuster Macmillan.

1997. “The Future of Hellenism in America.” Ahepan Magazine, summer, pp. 11–12.

1998. “The Greeks in the United States.” In The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century. Richard Clogg, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press (in press).

Scholarship

Goal: to set research agenda for international social science community on armed forces and society.

Short-range aim: to show how scholarly work can shape public policy.

Long-range aim: show sociology’s raison d’etre is to be anti-economics.

Also, chronicler of Greek American experience. [Source?]

Immigrant Adaptations: Reflections

The adaptation of members of an immigrant group––defined as adjustments in conformity with the prevailing norms of a society––often elicits praise. The newcomers are exalted for recognizing new realities and modifying their ideas and cultural practices accordingly.

Adaptation is seen as an apt strategy of embracing dominant values, bringing benefits to those who consent to it. Aligning with a particular power regime shields the group from being subjected to that power.

In this version, adaptation stands for cultural entrepreneurialism: possessing the acumen to identify power relations for the purpose of furthering one’s interests.

This admiration of adaptation, however, is shortsighted; ideologically suspect. It is blind to the fact that a minority’s alignment with dominant values harms people who are still peripheral and oppressed by the majority.

In the early 20th century and beyond, for example, immigrant adaptations to whiteness––conformity to the hierarchical racial status quo––brought immense privileges to those who embraced it. Subjected to the pressures of the aggressive 100% Americanization movement––an ideology also embraced by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s––a sector of immigrants learned this lesson quickly. Conformity to the dictates of whiteness was rewarded while dissent, instead, was severely punished.

Some justify this adaptation as a necessary and inevitable strategy for the economic survival of the emerging class of immigrant small business owners. The move to safeguard their interests––their adaptation politics––paid significant economic and social dividends. Cities in the American South honored in public those immigrants adapting––consenting––to segregationist Jim Crow.

But [mainstream] historians encourage critical reflection about adaptation. Seeing adaptation as a practice in connection to power, they invite us to consider its effects not only on those consenting to it but also on those subjected to it.

Andrew Manis, a historian of Greek Americans in the Jim Crow American South, rightly names adaptation as a mechanism of social control, which cancels out immigrant agency. He writes, “Greeks were trusted as also Americans who would remain silent on Protestant dominance, white supremacy, and brute force” (2021, 64). They were indeed among those who resisted most vociferously the pro-civil rights stance of Archbishop Iakovos.

Adaptation to whiteness led some immigrants to keep reproducing the country’s racial hierarchies, inflicting the same harm to others that the majority originally inflicted upon them. 

Steven Gerontakis (2012) puts this process starkly:

“In the 1920s, Greeks were excluded from ‘white men’s towns’ and ‘white men’s jobs’ in Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado, yet by 1940 had reached the point of ‘othering’ Mexicans out of Greek-owned ‘White Only’ establishments” (23).

Historians then decisively bring this point home: Let us examine adaptation as a historical process and recognize its multifaceted effects on society, instead of glorifying it as immigrant “success.”

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Works Cited

Gerontakis, Steven. 2012. AHEPA vs. the KKK: Greek-Americans on the Path to Whiteness. Senior Thesis. University of North Carolina at Asheville, North Carolina, 2012 [http://toto.lib.unca.edu/sr_papers/history_sr/srhistory_2012/gerontakis_steven.pdf]

Manis, Andrew M. 2021. “Religion, Belonging, and Social Mobility in Civil Rights Era Birmingham, Alabama.” Ex-centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media 5. [https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/ExCentric/article/view/8493]

15th Annual Pallas Lecture: Speaking Greek at the American University Over the Last Two Centuries (2017)

Context: University of Michigan Lecture Series

Scope: "Celebrating the continuous presence of Greek as a language and a subject of learning on the Michigan campus since 1817 offers an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of "Greek." A host of questions arises: What do Ancient and Modern Greek studies have to say to each other? What kind of conversation have Modern Greek studies–where Modern Greek is spoken–and Classics–where Ancient Greek is read–been carrying on over the last couple of centuries? What tensions, silences, and mutualities have defined this relationship? The lecture traces the history of this relationship, and focuses on ways in which academic multiculturalism has fostered intellectual exchange among scholars of Ancient and Modern Greek. It discusses institutions, scholars, films, fiction, and poetry that bring Classics into conversation with Modern Greek Studies, and develops its own word play on this relationship. It concludes by proposing a framework for future collaboration between the two academic fields: cultivation of a particular ethos of citizenship among students and the wider public" (narrative by the host institution)

Abstract: What do ancient and Modern Greek studies have to say to each other? What kind of conversation have Modern Greek studies–where Modern Greek is spoken–and Classics–where ancient Greek is read–been carrying on over the last couple centuries? What tensions, silences, and mutualities have defined this relationship? This talk traces several aspects of the history of this relationship, and focuses on ways in which academic multiculturalism has fostered intellectual exchange among scholars of ancient and Modern Greek. It discusses institutions, scholars, films, fiction, and poetry that bring Classics into conversation with Modern Greek studies, and develops its own word play on this relationship. It concludes by proposing a framework for future collaboration between the two academic fields: cultivation of a particular ethos of citizenship among students and the wider public. 

Opening paragraphs: I will be speaking today about speaking Greek at the American University. I do not, for a moment, take this opportunity for granted. Speaking about Greek, particularly ancient Greek in relation to Modern Greek, is not always an available option in the academy. I must, therefore, place my speaking in relation to the wider context that enables it. The fact that I am able to speak Greek in the academy stems from the immense labor of scholars who have founded Modern Greek programs in this country. But I do not also forget the support for Greek by those outside the university, such as the Greek American community and philhellenes whose financial support promotes the academic presence of Modern Greek. 

This very lecture is possible because of Dimitri Pallas, Founder and President of the Foundation for Modern Greek studies, and Irmgard Pallas, a philhellene. I extend my deep appreciation to the donors and the Foundation. I am neither a classicist, nor a linguist. How do I enter the terrain of speaking Greek over a span of two centuries? My training is in cultural studies. I am interested in the question of knowledge; who produces it and for what purpose. I have devoted my 2 professional life, for example, around a key question: how do we get to know Greek Americans? Who represents Greek identity in the United States, how, and for what purpose? This interest helps me focus. Ancient Greek and Modern Greek studies, two fields of knowledge: What defines their relationship in the American academy?

To read the talk see here: https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/modgreek-assets/modgreek-docs/2017PallasLecture.pdf

To watch, the lecture, https://vimeo.com/221459248

The lecture incorporates bilingual poetry, and features analysis of the film City Hall (1996), Jeffrey Eugenides's novel Middlesex, and Harry Mark Petrakis's short story Pericles on 31st Street. 

January 26, 2017

Why Support Greek American Archives?

The recent interview that Meletios Pouliopoulos, founder of the non-profit organization Greek Cultural Resources, gave to professor Petros Vamvakas raises urgent questions about the present and future of non-endowed initiatives to curate, develop, and digitize Greek American archives.

The mission of the Greek Cultural Resources "is to obtain, document, preserve, archive, promote, and provide access to recordings of Greek music and relevant traditions, as well as related publications, manuscripts, images, interviews, and film/video footage for the benefit of musicians, folk dance troupes, teaching institutions, scholars, performers, collectors, and the general public.​"

The digitization of the Hellenic Chronicle has also been part of Pouliopoulos's archival activism.

A major thread in the interview was about the value of archiving and digitizing Greek American material. Why should the public care? What good does a professional archive do, and how does it contribute to the cultural vitality of Greek America?

Without a (rich, professionally curated [RPC]––and therefore institutionally endowed), archive, we obviously lose (throw away literally) substantial material and knowledge associated with our history and heritage. The loss makes us less, resulting to cultural impoverishment. For the following reasons (among others):

• Without an RPC archive we fail to recognize substantive aspects of Greek American history; without it, it is impossible to understand those before us, and appreciate their experiences, toil, and accomplishments.

• Without an RPC archive there can be no substantial historical scholarship.

• Without an RPC archive there will be no material for the making of documentaries, films, and books about Greek America.

• Without an RPC and the cultural work it makes possible (scholarship, documentaries, films, etc.), future generations cannot see the place of their families, ethnic history and culture in connection to the American fabric.

• Without an RPC archive we are bound to keep compromising historical memory in exchange for sentimental memories.

Greek American RPC archives are not a luxury, but an urgent necessity.

We need not only donations (which are invaluable), but endowments to institutionalize and support archives in perpetuity. Some Greek Americans, and more recent Greek Canadians, have recognized the value in this investment.

Let us act now, and keep building on this legacy! We owe it to our parents, grandparents the next generation as well as the broader public.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

July 26-27.

The Helen Zeese Papanikolas Papers (1954-2009): Entering a Greek/American Archive

July 11, 2022. 

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah 

I enter prepared. Thanks to information on the web, I am already familiar with the topics for each box. I have reserved boxes 2, 8, and 9, enough, I presume, for a day’s work in the archive. I can still order additional ones on site, if needed. [indeed, I end up also requesting boxes 10 and 11] 

Box 8, folder 8, is a priority, the main purpose for visiting the collection. The description reads, 

“Louis Tikas and the Ludlow [CO] Massacre 

 Documents relating to Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre 1900-1914; 

Scholarship, correspondence, news clipping 1953-2001.”

I have a particular interest in box 2, folder 4, for its eye-witness accounts of Ku Klux Klan anti-immigrant activities, a topic in a talk I will be giving later this year. 

Box 9, folder 12 (Greek-Americans in the Southern States) will also take me to “family narrative of Ku Lux Klan attack on Greek immigrant family in West Virginia, circa 1910.” 

*** 

I enter the Special Collections at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library, sharply at 10:00 a.m., the opening time. I introduce myself and register, the boxes, neatly stacked, waiting. 

The Helen Zeese Papanikolas papers! The anticipation for opening the archive of a researcher whose published work I know intimately overflows, spills excitement. It spells eagerness, earnestness seizes me, as I am about to see and touch material from more than a century ago. In archives, I have read, researchers are “feeling things,” they “can experience an intensely close, even physical connection to past lives.” Archives lessen distances across time. 

Folder-after-folder I enter the world of Helen Papanikolas’ (1917-2004) work, and the world of the archive enters me. The sense of recognition is overwhelming. Familiar names (Louis Tikas), places (immigrant kafeneia), issues (labor conflict), events (the 1909 anti-Greek riot in south Omaha, the Ludlow Massacre in 1914), authors (E.D. Karampetsos), organizations (GAPA, Daughters of Penelope), transport me to an immigrant––Greek/American––cultural geography I have been navigating for years. 

But the scale of this landscape is ungraspable in its expansiveness, even after a life’s work striving to imagine its multifaceted contours. The power of the archive, its bits and pieces capable of opening up the viewer to the vastness of an era. 

Newspaper clips, brochures, pamphlets, photographs, articles, monographs, conference papers, self-published books, dissertations, oral history transcripts, theatrical plays, musical sheets, even restaurant menus. 

Collected with care (certainly), passion (I imagine), methodical consistency; the dedication (no doubt) of a meticulous scholar. This is a Greek/American world of words and images that form an organic part of my own intellectual biography too. Moved, I feel a visceral sense of belonging to this world. A deep recognition of being part of a larger research community across time. 

The archive, of course, takes me to unexplored landscapes and unfamiliar places. Unknown facts, unexpected documents, unpublished papers, unrecognized truths, unasked questions, unachieved immigrant lives, harshly terminated. Invaluable archival gems. 

The immense labor that precedes published work unfolds, document-after-document. It is there to see in countless documents, notes, remarks. It becomes tangible almost, the toil of a researcher; bridging the past and the present, bringing me closer to Helen’s practices of collecting. I feel the archives’ vastness as it beckons me to reach its nooks and crannies. There is something physical in its power to carry me further, deeper. The papers put a spell on me––an “archive fever”––they fuel the yearning for learning, the desire to devour its materiality. 

I resist this impulse––I only have two days of research available. I turn into practical management. I prioritize, I take notes selectively. I take photos, a lot of them. Certain colleagues come to mind when I come across material relevant to their research. I make a mental note to let them know. 

I register material that I would like to look closer, in a future visit (Helen Zeese Papanikolas Papers, MS 0471): 

• Steven G. Economou’s (1922-2007) Greeknglish: An Illustrated Lexicon, which I marvel, is on the top of my list. (Box 8, folder 1)

• Oh, GAPA’s national anthem! (Box 10)

• An unpublished monograph by Thalia Cheronis Selz (Greek-Americans in the Visual Arts), is a must. (Box 10, folder 2)

• “The Brooklis in Athens, A One Act Hilarious Comedy” by Mimis Dimitriou (James Demetrius) … (Box 11, folder 4)

I look at my watch, 2:30 p.m. already! Moments of exhilarating discoveries compress time, as I traverse across time. The archive feeds the hunger for more. I skip lunch.

I use the remaining time taking notes, I share some here:

• On Greeknglish and translanguaging: An immigrant refers to a labor strike as “strikey”

[Ο Τίκας ήταν ένας από τους εργάτες] «που έκανε προτεsting» (Letter by Petter Louos [Louloudakis] to the editor of the Cretan magazine, Nov. 2, 1973; Zeese Papanikolas makes a note of these linguistic occurrences in his translation of the letter in English). (MS 0471, Box 8, folder 8)

• Labor exploitation – A Western Federation of Miners (Bingham, County) representative’s letter to the Ambassador of Turkey in Washington, D.C. (May 17, 1912), urging him to take action to end the exploitation of his Cretan subjects from the Greek labor agent Leonidas Skliris:

The letter “calls [the Ambassador’s] attention to a deplorable state of affairs in this state [unintelligible] rein several hundred of Your Majesty’s subjects – Cretian [sic] – are held in semi slavery by one L. G. Skiliris [sic], a Greek [labor] agent residing in Salt Lake City,” calling the ambassador to conduct “a secret investigation” and subsequently take steps “at once” “to put a stop to the terrible state of affairs that exist here.” (MS 0471, Box 8, folder 6) •

• Sociologist’s Charles Moskos self-ascription: “‘My ethnic identity is much more Byzantine- Ottoman-modern Greek and Greek American,” he claims. ‘Spanakopita to me is as important as the Parthenon’” (“Moskos: A Friend of the Grant,” National Herald [?], “before Nov. 7, 2000,” “Incomplete”

Period. Time is up, the office is closing. 

Lost in the worlds of the archive, blurring past and present, I forget my glasses (truly) at my desk. No doubt now, I will be visiting the next day to restore my vision. 

*** 

Postscript 

               “If the experience of archives can help us hear voices 

                    from the past, it can also prompt many new voices today.”

The archive assaults cultural mythologies. In official documents (applications for pensions for instance), newspapers, oral histories, and reminiscences one hears echoes of immigrant voices––spending one’s entire life in coal mining jobs; or boiling in resentment toward ungrateful relatives in the patridha. Immigrants who rarely visited their villages (poverty you see; the need to keep the family business going; strife with relatives, alienation; the Depression; wars), if ever. 

The archive prompts reflection on broader cultural orientations. Its significant holdings on the topic of “customs and traditions” in Utah, in the 1970s, are largely connected with interviews that students in the course “Peoples of Utah” (taught by Helen Papanikolas in 1977 and 1979) conducted with immigrants or their children residing in Utah. 

This directs me to think of the place of immigrant customs and traditions in connection to nascent U.S. multiculturalism. Traditions were the major staple in early ethnic festivals (food and dance) and were displayed (artifacts) in the same spaces in specially configured “village rooms” simulating immigrant origins. They were performed in folk music festivals. They were the subject of articles in scholarly and general interest journals. Later, in the 1980s and beyond, customs and traditions were displayed in museums, and some became entrenched as markers of ethnic identity. In the 1970s, customs and traditions offered a readily available resources for ethnic communities to showcase their particularity, while introducing and explaining the group to the broader public. The archive helps me understand the emphasis on customs and traditions in the Hellenic Cultural Museum of America in Salt Lake City, a place I had visited a couple of days earlier. Local high schools organize field trips to the museum, and the community’s festival visitors enjoy access to it. 

A thread in the archive still follows me, in fact, haunts me. It is Helen Papanikolas’ earnest quest in the early 1970s to collect information about the labor leader Louis Tikas, murdered on April 20, 1914. In her letters to senators, librarians, and the ads she placed in the Cretan American press I hear the urgency of her voice seeking any lead, any trace about this forgotten person’s life. In her efforts, I witness the ethnohistorian’s pressing search for a taboo subject, a silenced subject at the time. Her search yields a precious little, it is more dead ends, one after another. I try to imagine the scale of her frustration. 

In an interview Helen gave to Peter C. Chronis of the Denver Post [no date; circa 1970s], I can hear the resignation in her voice, but also register her call for cultural activism, her call for agency as a result. I find it necessary to cite the following long passage from Chronis’ article, entitled “Holding on to a heritage,” for context: 

"… material on Greek immigrants in the Western History of Collection of the Denver Public Library is scarce. There are some openly bigoted newspaper clippings, from the early 1900s; and a 1969 thesis on the unassimilated coffee-house Greeks [by George James Patterson] filed away from public view (A 1914 Denver post article decrying Tikas’ murder isn’t in the Ludlow file, but a xenophobic diatribe from the Trinidad Chronicle-News is.)

The pickings are slim at the Colorado State Historical Society library.
…

Helen Z. Papanikolas said she’s found little material about Greek immigrants in other states’ libraries. 'We have to write our own histories,' she said, 'and see that historical societies get our memorabilia.”'"(MS 0471, Box 8, folder 8)

This question presses itself. And now, who will be documenting Utah’s Greek/American voices? In Salt Lake City, Price, and other small towns? Who will be listening Greek/American voices in New Mexico, and Oklahoma? Who will be documenting historical and cultural material, and keep placing them in state and national institutions? Who will be “prompt[ing] [the] many new voices today”? 

Helen’s archive looks us squarely in the eye. 

What do we owe to it? 

Yiorgos Anagnostou

July 14-19, 2022

Acknowledgements: I thank the staff at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah for their extraordinary assistance and courtesy. 

Citations 

Helen Zeese Papanikolas papers, MS 0471, Special Collections and Archives. University of Utah, J. Willard Marriott Library. Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Μαρτυρία Μετανάστη Αντωνίου Ανωνύμου

“This work is about those forgotten women and men, immigrants, who labor in extraordinary effort, but who toil and eventually die in complete silence and anonymity. They are the voiceless, even as they have fed tens of millions of Americans…” 

Taso Lagos, “Cooking Greek, Becoming American: Forty Years at Seattle’s Continental Restaurant” (2022) 

Διαβάζω τις παραπάνω γραμμές και το αίσθημα αναγνώρισης με συνταράσσει.

Όταν τον Μάρτιο του 2020 το κόβιντ σήμαινε φάσμα θανάτου έθεσα στον εαυτό μου το εξής ερώτημα: τι ήταν αυτό που απόλυτα προέχει να αφήσω πίσω μου ως ύστατη παρακαταθήκη; Δεν υπήρξε η παραμικρή αμφιβολία για την απάντηση, όλη μου η ύπαρξη επέβαλλε να δώσει φωνή στην επταετή μου εμπειρία ως σερβιτόρου στην Αμερική, ενός (εξαντλητικού) επαγγέλματος που εξάσκησα από το 1985 μέχρι το 1992, παράλληλα με τις σπουδές μου, πρώτα στην Μηχανική Περιβάλλοντος και μετέπειτα στην Πολιτισμική Ανθρωπολογία. 

Η πιθανότητα «απόλυτης σιωπής» για αυτήν την πτυχή της μεταναστευτικής μου εμπειρίας που βαθιά με καθόρισε μου ήταν αδιανόητη. 

Το καλοκαίρι του 2020 άρχισα την επεξεργασία ενός τέτοιου αφηγήματος, όχι ακριβώς αυτοβιογραφίας, αλλά κάτι που θα ονομάζαμε auto-fiction. Όμως όχι για πολύ, επείγουσες υποχρεώσεις στο πανεπιστήμιο και αλλού  επέβαλλαν αναβολή. Οι προτεραιότητες είχαν αλλάξει, δεν υπήρχε άλλη επιλογή. Αυτή η εργασία πρέπει να περιμένει, άγνωστο μέχρι πότε. 

Αποφάσισα όμως να μοιραστώ ένα απόσπασμα υπό ανάπτυξη, ο τρόπος μου να συνεισφέρω στην συζήτηση για την «κουλτούρα του Ελληνοαμερικανικού εστιατορίου» που επιτέλους έχει αρχίσει! (καθώς και τις εργατικές καταβολές κάποιων από εμάς που τώρα βρισκόμαστε στο Αμερικανικό πανεπιστήμιο)

Μαρτυρία Μετανάστη Αντωνίου Ανωνύμου 

… Αυτή η έννοια του επιβεβλημένου-εντατικοποιημένου-πειθαρχημένου χρόνου μου επιτρέπει να συναντήσω, επίσης στην λογοτεχνία, κάποιους παλιούς αλλά διαφορετικού τύπου μετανάστες, αυτούς που αντί για απεργία την έκαναν με άλλη «επιχειρη-ματολογία». 

Το Middlesex ακόμη μια φορά φωτίζει τα ίχνη συγγένειας με εκείνους τότε, η λογοτεχνία κάτι σαν ηχώ αναγνώρισης ιστορικού χρονομέτρου: 

«Η σύντομη θητεία του παππού μου στη Βιομηχανία Μηχανημάτων Φορντ σημάδεψε τη μοναδική φορά που οποιοσδήποτε Στεφανίδης δούλεψε στην αυτοκινητοβιομηχανία. Αντί γι αυτοκίνητα, έμελλε να γίνουμε κατασκευαστές πιάτων με χάμπουργκερ και ελληνικές σαλάτες, βιομήχανοι της σπανακόπιτας και των ψημένων σάντουιτς με τυρί, τεχνοκράτες του ρυζόγαλου και της τάρτας με κρέμα μπανάνα. Γραμμή συναρμολόγησης ήταν για μας η ψησταριά». (Ευγενίδης, σ. 139) 

Όταν οι σημερινοί μετανάστες επιχειρηματίες λιτά λιτανεύουν λέξεις όπως γουόρk, harντ γουόρk, αυτήν την μεταβιομηχανική βιομηχανοποίηση του χρόνου αποδίδουν. Δεν είναι τυχαίο που οι σχετικά νεότερες καραβάνες της ξενιτιάς, αυτοί του 1960 και 1970, αυτούς που συναντήσαμε και συναναστραφήκαμε, ήταν άσσοι στην μεταφορά του σχετικού λεξιλογίου. «Κουρδισμένη η μέρα ανάλογα με τις αλλαγές φρουράς, υπακοή και υπομονή», δεν έπαυαν να επαναλαμβάνουν σαν μαγνητοφωνημένο διάταγμα, το δικό τους παράσημο επαγγελματικής ανόδου πειστήριο της αλήθειάς τους. «Οι συνήθειες των παλιών έγιναν και δικές μας, θα γίνουν και δικές σας» έλεγαν––και το αποδίδω πιστά στα ελληνοαγγλικά τους, «το habit τους θα γίνει και δικό σας habit», αποστήθιση μιας επικής μεταναστευτικής γενεαλογίας. 

Αλλαγή φρουράς! Εγώ προσωπικά περί στρατιωτικής ζωής δεν γνωρίζω, ανυπότακτος κηρύχθηκα (η ανωνυμία με επιτρέπει να εξομολογηθώ στην αστυνομία). Αλλά άμεσοι ήταν οι παραλληλισμοί μεταξύ της εμπειρίας τους στο στράτευμα και αυτής στην ξενιτιά. Αυτό από τον λαϊκό ποιητή της παρέας, καταγραμμένο: «Μεραρχία, κλίνατε προς τα δεξιά, έτοιμοι, εμπρός μαρς! Εμπρός για τον Mars, να ξεγλιστρήσουμε του γδάρτη March». Ακόμα και στο τσακίρ κέφι το φάντασμα του παρελθόντος χαριτολογώντας στοιχειώνει το παρόν. Τικ τακ, τίκι τίκι τακ, ο χρόνος ωρολογιακή βόμβα. Ο χρόνος που δημιουργεί την διάβαση προς το μεταναστευτικό όνειρο είναι ο παγερά επαναλαμβανόμενος χρόνος. Ο ρυθμισμένος χρόνος, ο σταματημένος στην κυκλικότητά του σε αέναη κίνηση. Έτοιμοι, εμπρός, αλτ· εμπρός αλτ!». Εμπρός march! 

Άλλοι πάλι, θυμάμαι, το έθεταν με ποδοσφαιρικούς όρους. «Και εκτός έδρας παίζετε, και το γήπεδο δεν γνωρίζετε, και με παίκτη λιγότερο παίζετε», μας νουθετούσαν. «Δουλέψτε, τρέξτε, αγωνιστείτε, βρείτε το σύστημα, να μπορέσετε να ποντάρετε διπλό για την έκπληξη». Δεκατριάρι στην πιάτσα λαϊκής κοινωνιολογίας τα λόγια τους. 

Σε μας απευθυνόταν, εμείς το ακροατήριο, οι μάρτυρες της μαρτυρίας τους. Με μας αισθανόταν μια κάποια συγγένεια, ένα νήμα αναγνώρισης με μας ήταν που τους διέτρεχε. Διότι εμείς βλέπετε δεν ήμασταν απλώς φοιτητές εξωτερικού. «Κάτι παραπάνω και συνάμα κάτι λιγότερο ήμασταν. Της ανάγκης διπλή ιδιότητα είχαμε, φοιτητές–εργάτες. Διπλά ωράρια, το σώμα να τσιρίζει ––εργάτες–φοιτητές /φοιτητές–εργάτες–– την γραμματική εργασίαςχωρίςανάπαυλα». Η ταξική μας θέση απαιτούσε διπλή τάξη, σε προστακτική. 

Για να ακριβολογήσω, σερβιτόροι-φοιτητές είμασταν, φοιτητές φτωχαδάκια. Είτε η αποτυχία στις Πανελλαδικές, είτε η δραπέτευση από καταστάσεις ανομολόγητες, είτε η φτώχεια και άλλα κάτεργα της Ελληνικής κοινωνίας μας έφεραν μαζί. Ελιγμός φυγής από τον σιδερένιο κλοιό της οικογένειας για κάποιους, κατεργαραίοι όπου φύγει-φύγει. Κάποιοι, μια οξεία μειονότητα (όπως αποδείχθηκε), είχαν διακρίνει τα σύννεφα-καταιγίδες του λαϊκισμού στην ελλάδα να μαυρίζουν το αριστερό όνειρο. Για μερικούς, το σπανιότατο είδος στην πιάτσα μας––«φοιτητής στις ανθρωπιστικές επιστήμες»––αιτία εξόδου η ασφυκτική συντηρητικότητα της Ελληνικής φιλολογίας, δεν κουραζόταν να επαναλαμβάνουν. (αυτό, με πήρε πολύ καιρό και αρκετά διαβάσματα να το καταλάβω.) Αλλά για μας, η φτώχια, φρένο και ώθηση ταυτόχρονα, να το ξαναπώ. Τα κάτι που έστελναν οι γονείς, όταν μπορούσαν, όσο άντεχαν, αν ήταν δυνατόν, δεν αρκούσαν παρά για τα μεθύσια του σαββατοκύριακου· για την εβδομαδιαία σωτήρια κάθαρση. Η δραχμή τότε ψίχουλα ήταν, τα δίδακτρα υπέρογκα σε δολάρια. Σερβιτόροι σε ελληνικό εστιατόριο, φυσικά. Χωρίς άδεια εργασίας, πού αλλού; Καταφύγιο στους ομοεθνείς, στα όμοια. «Βάρος στους ώμους και ο δίσκος σουβλάκια φορτωμένος, και το σουβλερό ρίσκο της παρανομίας του συνεχής υπενθύμιση στο σώμα». 

Εξάρτιση από μια και μοναδική αγορά εργασίας σήμαινε ένα σημαντικό «δεν». Δεν σε εκθετική επανάληψη. Δεν τολμάς ρότα προς Ελλάδα τα καλοκαίρια, ακόμα κι αν έχεις την πολυτέλεια να καλύψεις τα αεροπορικά. Δεν ρωτάς τον εαυτό σου πως αισθάνεται απλώς παπαγαλίζεις, δεν πάω, δεν το διακινδυνεύω, δεν το ρισκάρω πρέπει να πεις να τον πείσεις, η παρουσία σου στο μαγαζί μεσοκαλόκαιρο ξόρκι μη τυχόν και κάποιος νεοφερμένος αρπάξει την θέση εργασίας στην περίπτωση που εσύ με φραπέ αφρών Αιγαίου θα υπνωτιζόσουνα. Μιλάμε για στρίμωγμα ζήτησης αγαπητή μου αναγνώστρια. Συνωστισμός. «Ήταν και αυτοί που είχαν κηρυχθεί ανυπότακτοι, μεταπτυχιακοί κυρίως, ακάλυπτοι (ποιος θα χαρτογραφήσει το Γ.Ο.Κ. της παράνομης παραμονής;) από υποτροφίες τα καλοκαίρια. Εσωτερικός ανταγωνισμός στην συρρικνωμένη αγορά εργασίας. Μελίσσι τα δυο Greek restaurant της πόλης μας, σμήνη οι μνηστήρες μεταφοράς μπακλαβά, ταξιαρχίες οι παράνομοι εργάτες». Ρωτήστε τριγύρω να εξακριβώσετε αν το θεωρείτε απαραίτητο, αν το εξομολογηθούν βέβαια οι ερωτώμενοι, ίσως ανώνυμα, σε ερμητικά σφραγισμένα υπόγεια σαπίζουν τα μυστικά. Για τα παλιά, τα εξομολογήθηκε το συναξάρι του Κορδοπάτη. Δεν αμέλησε να μας υπενθυμίσει και ο Καζάν τον έλληνα μετανάστη με πλαστογραφημένη ταυτότητα στο Αμέρικα Αμέρικα. …. 

Κάπως έτσι λοιπόν επιταχύνθηκε η επιστράτευσή μας στην «βιομηχανία σπανακόπιτας» και στους «τεχνοκράτες ρυζόγαλου» εργασία σερβίρισμα στον ελεύθερο χρόνο της μεσαίας τάξης, στα ραντεβού, στα τελετουργικά φλερτάκια τους άγρυπνη υπηρεσία εμείς, ορίστε φιλετάκια από εδώ, ελληνικά παϊδάκια από εκεί, περιστροφική αντλία σαγανάκι-όπα! all around Τρύπες παντού, στις γνώσεις μας, στα Αγγλικά μας, στην τσέπη μας, στις σόλες των παπουτσιών μας, κι όμως άψογη η νεοαποκτηθείσα ευγένεια. “Can I get you anything else? Thanks for coming, have a good night!” 

Μαρσάρει στην πηχτή νύχτα ο πελάτης με την καλλονή, ρυθμός sirtaki επιτάχυνση, σκύβουμε κι εμείς στα κιτάπια μας να μετράμε δολάριο με δολάριο τα υγρά φιλοδωρήματα, με τρυφερότητα, αξίζει να αναφερθεί, με μια τόση μα τόση τρυφερότητα που μόνο ένα κορμάκι πνιγμένο στον ιδρώτα προσκαλεί… 

Γιώργος Αναγνώστου

Καλοκαίρι 2020

A Posthumous Letter to Dan Georgakas

Read in the event “The Life, Times and Works of Dan Georgakas,” Panel Discussion. Organized by EMBCA

Talk starts at about 1:43'

Dear Dan, 

It is now more than four months since the news of your passing. Despite your age, I was in disbelief when I found out. I supposed you would be with us forever. 

Once the news of your death sunk in, I made it my habit to revisit your work, rereading your scholarship, about Greek American studies mostly, a subject that was dear to you. I also reread excerpts from your memoir, some poems, and listened to some of your interviews. I plan to study your seminal work, “Detroit I do Mind.” 

As I reread your work, I try to take the measure of what you have left us, our inheritance. And I grapple with the question, what to do with this inheritance? What should each of us individually, and all of us collectively, do with what you have left us? What is our responsibility to your work? 

As I reread your work, I realize, more than ever, how much the immigrant past mattered to you. You cared about the past, you wanted to direct our attention to it, particularly those aspects that have been neglected, or forgotten, discarded as irrelevant, or tossed aside as uncomfortable. You wanted us to know about the working class; the exploitations that it suffered, its involvement in the labor movement for a better America. You wanted us to understand the power of racism, in an interview, in 2018, you called it “the cancer of American society”; you wanted us to understand how it shaped our place and the place of others in the United States. You also wrote about women from a unique angle; unconventional, creative, bold Greek American women in the 1960s. Your poetry also spoke about the experience of young Greek immigrant widows, who had no other options but marry much older men. 

You wanted us to understand the past, to grasp its complexities, to note its contradictions. You were a historian committed to documentation and determined to speak historical truths, even if those truths were taboo and made some in the community uncomfortable. It was, you felt, your responsibility, the right thing to do, the ethical thing to do. You had no patience with sugarcoating of the past. You witnessed it and you knew how unfair––one might say how violent––it is to try to cut the past down to size, to fit idealizations and serve triumphalism. 

As a historian and a person who eye-witnessed immigrant life you knew better than to simplify immigrant lives. You refused to caricature Greek Americans. You knew that immigrants struggled, worked hard, enjoyed some success, experienced failures. That is why you were impatient with the narrative of struggle and success. Life is not a linear highway leading to the Eldorado of the American Dream. Your perspective, your words, resonate with me deeply. I started my life as a working-class immigrant who achieved some things but failed in others. It is refreshing––viscerally refreshing––to hear you speak about the humanity of Greek Americans. To recognize their limits, their failings; which is to say, their humanity. In this you are in good company with Helen Papanikolas and Harry Mark Petrakis who also eye-witnessed much of twentieth century Greek America and did the same 

This passion of yours to humanize Greek Americans connects to another passion of yours: to develop Greek American studies. You saw academic research as a venue to understand Greek America’s complexity. You recognized it as one of the few remaining venues–– along with literature, poetry, and film––to learn, to reflect, to speak about difficult topics and new ideas. This is the reason you never tired of advocating Greek American studies. You saw the value of high quality, committed, rigorous Greek American research. You were calling for its institutional growth for a long time. 

But this call remains unheeded. Our institutions have not taken the necessary initiatives. At least, not yet. In our conversations we often pondered this question: Why is it that Greek Americans, who take such a great pride in their educational achievements, do not invest in Greek American humanities and social science? Why are the names of our poets, novelists, and labor heroes unknown? Do we know who George Economou was and why his work matters? Do we know why Louis Tikas was murdered? Do we know about the work of Nikos Petropoulos and why it is important? Do we know what a Greek American author meant when she wrote of her family’s “heritage of fear”? Do we know what Dan meant when he was referring to the ethnic “third eye” and its significance? 

Dear Dan, I read the praises of your person in Greek American obituaries. There is exaltation about your contributions to secular Greek American Hellenism, praise for promoting Greek American studies. I wonder what your feelings and thoughts would have been had you read this overwhelming approval. Perhaps you would have cracked your wry, knowing signature smile. Perhaps you would have said, “nice words, but will action follow”? 

You have left us with a legacy of many words and actions, Dan. The question we should be asking, I believe, is what we do with what you have left us. Do we know, as a community, what we have inherited from you? 

I am thinking a great deal about your non-academic intellectual work, your work as an editor of the American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, for example. Your numerous talks sponsored by Greek American organizations and communities. I am trying to understand your major shift, as I see it, from radical politics in the 1960s and 1970s to a kind of mainstream cultural activism in Greek America in the post-junta years. During our interview, in 2019, when I last saw you in person, I got the feeling that you wanted to bring change by working from within, as an insider. And you accomplished much. You managed to feature Greek American poetry in a Greek American policy journal! You published essays by Greek American college students. You kept inviting me to submit work for broad, non-academic audiences. You wanted, it seems to me, to gradually open up Greek American institutions to the humanities and social sciences. But I wish you were here with us to disclose, did you feel there were limits to what one could or could not say in these settings? Was there something radical you felt the need to say, but for some reason you didn’t? 

This question preoccupies me, and I believe it was on your mind too: is there room in Greek America for an inclusive, open dialogue which includes critical self-reflection? At some point in your life, you were struggling for a Greek American success––an alternative success––we rarely if ever talk about. Success in sustaining an exciting and yes agonistic conversation about Greek American issues, the ways we represent the Greek American past, the kind of cultural policy we practice, the Greek American future. It seems that we need to harvest our best democratic impulses to make this happen. 

Dan, it is time to bid farewell. This is my second farewell, the first was my tribute to your work in the journal Ergon. Dan, you kept working––working until your very last days––to enrich our understanding of Greek America. You spoke about taboo topics, you insisted that academics should also learn to speak for a broad Greek American audience, you advocated that we create spaces––journals, blogs, webinars––to foster an exciting Greek American conversation. This is the inheritance I embrace, and feel the responsibility to keep alive. 

I do not believe the journey ahead will be easy. After all, we have been building these spaces of learning for some time now. We have been building it, but will people come? What will it take for people and organizations to support our projects? 

Dear Dan Georgakas, son of Detroit, of New York City, of Anatolia and the Peloponnese; Dan of Cineaste, of “Detroit I do Mind Dying,” of Black Mask, of anti-junta activism: We will not only remember you; we will keep you informed of our news. We don’t know what the news will be. That depends on us. 

Αιωνία η μνήμη. 

Υiorgos Anagnostou 

April 10, 2022.