Beyond Greek America as Village

Even a casual observer of Greek American self-representations cannot miss the persistent desire to define the group along three basic attributes:

(a) biological bonds (ancestry) and traditional ties

(b) uniformity

(c) timelessness

The narrative celebrates all three. It exalts the culture of the village since Greek independence and yearns to establish it as an attractive cultural template for Greek America today.

A 2025 editorial in The National Herald, entitled “Dancing with Yiayia and Pappou,” asserts this yearning passionately:

There could be no more clear-cut definition of Greek America as a U.S. Greek village. Drawing the boundaries of the group along the core criteria of ancestry and tradition, sharedness, and timelessness, it projects an ethnic future solely based on the past.

Greek villages were notorious for safeguarding their core values through mechanisms of shaming, punishing, or ostracizing those who dissented. The new was feared as a challenge to the status quo and had to be neutralized. It is not surprising then that the rendition of Greek America as ethnic village renders invisible those who represent alternative visions.

Some demographics which the village model excludes are the following:

• There is those with no Greek ancestry who cultivate serious Greek learning. They read and write about Greece (and Greek America), speak the language fluently, produce music, write poetry, do research, translate its writers and poets, value Greek modernity, and often teach it. The conventional meaning of “Philhellene” does not do justice to these persons who are immersed in Greek American institutional and social worlds which they shape. Sometimes they are married or in intimate partnerships with Greek people. They identify or feel Greek not through “blood” or customs, but engagement with Greek American modernity.

• The fact of course is that Greek America is immensely heterogeneous. There are those who identify as Greek without speaking the language. Not all Greek Americans practice Greek Orthodoxy. A sector keeps a distance from tradition––some are not seduced by folk dancing and customs. Others feel alienated as they have been subjected to the oppression and traumas that the US Greek village culture has inflicted on countless women and men, feminists, progressives, mavericks, intellectuals, non-heteronormative sexual identities. A deep resentment against immigrant patriarchy still persists.

• Instead of finding meaning in the confines of the ethnic village, a diverse Greek American demographic connects with Greek worlds via modernity––literature, the arts, books. Individuals participate and support networks of contemporary Greek American cultural expressions––film festivals, lectures on the immigrant working class, journals, art exhibits. The so-called timelessness of tradition (its meanings, expressions, and purposes change) feels inadequate in their desires to function as agents in participating and contributing toward new Greek American expressions of civic relevance.

Obviously, the nostalgic longing for Greek America as a cultural and temporal capsule functions as a mechanism of exclusion. But its implications go deeper. Finding solace to the reproduction of a narrow cultural core, it refrains from engaging with educational initiatives and cultural policy to address Greek America’s increasing heterogeneity. Its centripetal orientation reverts to "sameness," having nothing to say about new and emerging realities.

In contrast, individuals across the demographics I outlined above envision a dynamic Greek America of cultural becoming. We call this diverse field the Other Greek America. Theirs is a centripetal model which, alas, is sidelined by major institutions and centers of power.

We owe it to the richness of Greek America to render the Other Greek America visible. For the last five years or so, the online, open access journal Ergon: Greek American &Diaspora Arts and Letters has been taking several steps toward this direction. (1)

We will be expanding this project next by featuring perspectives which articulate the contours of Greek America beyond the controls of the ethnic village.

The project is entitled Voices of the Other Greek America.

Stay tuned. It commences on January 1, 2026.

Yiorgos Anagnostou

Note

1. On heterogeneity, alternative visions, policy, and resistance to narrow definitions of Greek America see:

• “The Other Greek America—Editorial.” Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters. March 11, 2023. (https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/editorials/the-other-greek-america)

• “Greek America’s Diversity, After the Fact: What Comes Next?” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. August 29, 2022. (https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/greek-americas-diversity)

• “A Paradigm Award, A Paradigm for Greek/American Cultural Policy.” Erγon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. August 3, 2021. (https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/greek-american-cultural-policy)

• “Greek American Youth: Multiplying Routes to Hellenism as Cultural Policy.” American Journal of Contemporary Hellenic Issues, 11 (Spring), 1–7, 2020.