The National Herald - Amazon S3 · grants in the Southern United States, 1895-1965” by Larry Odzak; and "Remembering Newark's Greeks: An American Odyssey” by Angelique Lambros

The National Herald

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May 26, 2007

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THE NATIONAL HERALD MAY 26, 20072

THE NATIONAL HERALD MAY 26, 2007 3

Iam the curator of the exhibit, “Greeks of Berrien County, Michigan,” acollaborative effort between a community institution, The HistoryCenter at Courthouse Square, and a local church, the Annunciationand St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church. Especially touching to me

have been the tears that have welled up in exhibit viewer’s eyes as theywitness, through photos or words, the experiences the immigrants facedwhen they chose to journey to a far-away land, leaving family behind.

In this issue we review four non-fiction books dealing with the immi-grant experience. They include “Growing Up Greek in St. Louis” byAphrodite Matsakis: “My Detroit: Growing up Greek and American in theMotor City” by Dan Georgakas; “Demetrios is Now Jimmy: Greek Immi-grants in the Southern United States, 1895-1965” by Larry Odzak; and"Remembering Newark's Greeks: An American Odyssey” by AngeliqueLambros. Through these books, you can vicariously experience the immi-grant experience. You may find tears welling up in your eyes.

Several themes emerged from these books. Tears were shed on bothsides of the ocean when families were separated. The immigrants facedvirulent prejudice when they came here at the beginning of the 20th cen-tury.

They worked at backbreaking menial jobs to put bread on the tableand help their families back in Greece. (We didn’t become one of the best-educated and wealthiest immigrant groups overnight.) The immigrantsstruggled to transmit their Greek heritage to the younger generation, ageneration that sometimes fought against the old-world ways and re-belled against going to Greek school. Most of the immigrants (not all) re-alized the dream of finding a better way of life for their families in Ameri-ca and became respected members of the community.

I invite you to read these books as well as the other books we have re-viewed for this issue of “Books.” They include candid books about Greecein modern times: “Facing Athens:Encounters with the Modern City” byGeorge Sarrinikolaou, as well the “The Passport and Other Selected ShortStories.” by Antonis Samarakis, translated by Andrew Horton. There arealso books about Greece in Roman and Byzantine times: “Sailing from:Byzantium, How a Lost Empire Saved the World” by Colin Wells; “Cyriacof Ancona, Later Travels” translated by Edward W. Bodnar with CliveFoss; and “Greek Athletics in the Roman World” by Zahara Newby. Forthose who want lighter fare, try the spicy novels penned by Tori Carring-ton (aka Tony & Lori Karayianni) about private eye, Sofie Metropolis,who lives and works in Astoria, New York.

The literary supplement is pleased to receive copies for review from in-dependent presses and individuals. All titles received will be given seriousconsideration. Submit publications, written in English about Greece orGreek Americans, to The National Herald, 37-10 30th Street, Long IslandCity, New York 11101.

Elaine Thomopoulos Managing Editor

Email: [email protected]

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By Aphrodite Matsakis Special to The National Herald

It was love at first sight. Theminute Tony Karayianni laid oneyes on Lori (at a Greek restaurantof course), he knew she was thelove of his life. Decades later, theirromance is alive and well. Evenmore amazing, this dynamic hus-band-and-wife duo, who use thepen-name Tori Carrington, are theco-authors of over 35 romance andmystery novels which HarlequinWorldwide has published in over24 different languages (includingGreek) in over 100 countries. Theirbooks have made bestseller listsand won multiple national awards.To date, there are over three mil-lion copies of their books in print.Lori tends to be the chief writerand Tony, the master plotter.

Sofie Metropolis, often calledthe Greek American Nancy Drew, isthe heroine of both “Sofie Metrop-olis” and “Dirty Laundry.” Thesefast paced mysteries, which takeplace in the close-knit Greek Amer-ican community of Astoria, NY, arelaced with plenty of humor andplenty of sensuality, “souvlakia,”and “koulourakia” as well. (Thereare recipes for some of Sofie’s fa-vorite Greek dishes at the back ofboth books.) Although far from be-ing sociological tracts, the Sofie se-ries portrays some of the clashesbetween old world and new worldstandards, especially pertaining towomen. On the one hand standSofie’s mother and grandmother,who rarely leave the home. (Sofie’sYiayia pretends she doesn’t under-stand English. Sofie’s mother has-n’t changed her hairdo in 30years!) On the other hand standsEfi, Sofie’s younger sister, who tat-toos and pierces her body with lit-tle regard to her mother’s protests.Instead of smiling politely at theGreek American prospective bride-groom whom her mother has invit-ed to meet her, Efi walks out him tokeep her date with another man.

In the middle stands Sofie, Pri-vate Investigator, with one foot inthe Greek world and one foot, out.Like the heroine in “My Big FatGreek Wedding,” Sofie finds aclever way to escape her fate as awaitress in a family restaurant. “Iused to be Sofie Metropolis, wait-ress and good Greek daughter –not necessarily in that order. NowI’m Sofie Metropolis, PI.” Yet, evenin the midst of her life-threateningdetective work, she can feel com-pelled to return her mother’s inces-sant phone calls. “I hated that mymother still had the ability to makeme feel guilty,” Sofie says.

In search of clues, Sofie enters

dangerous buildings and other life-threatening situations. She’s aquick-thinking “leventissa” whocan shoot a gun, and in “DirtyLaundry” she proves her mettle bystanding up to mobsters. Yet whenher mother’s friends ask her for fa-vors she considers beneath her pro-fessional status, like finding theirlost pets (for free of course), thegood Greek girl in Sofie can’t say“no.”

While her family worries thattheir “gerontokori” (old maid) maynever marry, Sofie is more worriedabout her lack of a love life thanher lack of a husband. “I couldswear I woke up this morning tothe sound of my body humming.Humming. You know, like somekind of internal alarm clock hadgone off denoting how manyweeks had passed since I’d last hadsex. It hadn’t helped when I’d fig-ured out I’d been lying on my vi-brating cell phone and that thecaller was the wrong number. I fig-ured that at this point I was luckynot to have lost my mind, althougheven that might be up for debate.... I can see it now, Sofie MetropolisPI and born-again virgin.”

Her lustful desires for a hand-some Australian bounty hunter is aconstant theme, and her wry obser-vations about being a singlewoman, especially a Greek Ameri-can single woman, are continualsources of humor. “The advantageof living alone is that you don’thave anyone around you to botheryou. The problem with being aloneis, well, that you don’t have anyonearound to bother you,” Sofie ob-serves.

In “Sofie Petropolis,” Sofie takeson the case of a cheating spousethat turns into a case of attemptedmurder. Sofie is the intended vic-tim. In “Dirty Laundry,” she investi-gates the case of a missing GreekAmerican dry cleaner suspected oflaundering money for the mob. Inthe process of trying to solve thismystery, she encounters mobsterswho want to throw her into a riverwearing cement shoes. “Theminute a figure emerged, Isqueezed off a round ... and foundmyself falling backward, ass-first ...my pistol bouncing away from me.I’d forgotten about the kick of thepowerful firearm ... Of course, itdidn’t help that my knees were

knocking together so loudly theynearly drowned out the screams ofa man who’d obviously been hit.”In both Sofie novels alongside themain action are several intriguingand entertaining subplots, likethose involving an alleged vampireand a lost ferret.

In “Dirty Laundry,” Sofie alsolooks into the possibility that herfamily has “dirty laundry” of it’sown. (Is her father cheating on hermother?) In both suspense fillednovels, readers can find themselvesmaking the sign of the cross inhopes that Sofie will stay alive,while at the same time chuckling ather hilarious comments about herinsecurities and ambivalent feel-ings about almost every part ofherself – her appearance, her per-sonality, her professional skills,and, of course, her “crazy” but lov-able Greek American family andfriends.

The Carrington’s first GreekAmerican heroine, Eva MavrosBurgess, appeared in their firstpublished title, “Constant Crav-ing,” which is now being reissuedby Harlequin. It’s full of the con-stant craving (sexual at first andlater on, emotional as well) be-tween the green-eyed drop-deadgorgeous Eva and an “American”detective, Adam Grayson that ulti-mately culminates in sizzling sex.The plot of “Constant Craving” re-volves around white-collar crimi-nals willing to kill to protect theirloot. Internal action is also in-volved as Eva, who broke the“good Greek girl” rules of her fami-ly and left her small town in Missis-sippi for an accounting career inthe big city, comes back to herhometown in hopes of mendingthe rift between herself and hercrusty old-fashioned Greek father.She also hopes to find the warmfamily life she had abandoned. Atone point during her big city ca-reer, she asks herself what her lifehad become:

“An emotionless void in whichshe functioned in no more an im-portant manner than a machine? ...Scared she might find out she’dmade a mistake so many years agowhen she left Belle Rivage and theoverbearing presence of her fa-ther? Trading it instead for a lifewithout emotion, without love?”

Tony Karayianni was born in asmall hillside village in AncientOlympia and moved to Athens withhis family when he was three. Inhis early teens and early twenties,he was a drummer in a number ofpop Greek bands. In 1976 he immi-grated to the U.S. In 1982 he metLori. She describes herself as an“American mutt” from Toledo who

Sofie Metropolis: The Greek American Nancy Drew

“Sofie Metropolis” By Tori Carrington

Tom Doherty Associates, 284 pages, $21.95 hardcover, $6.99 paperback

“Constant Craving”By Tori Carrington

Harlequin Temptation Line, 218pages, $4.99 paperback

“Dirty Laundry:Starring SofieMetropolis” By Tori Carrington

Tom Doherty Associates, 318 pages, $23.95

Lori and Tony Karayianni (aka Tori Carrington), are authors of over34 romance and mystery novels published in over 24 different lan-guages, including Greek, in over 100 countries. To date, there areover three million copies of their books in print.

TONY KARAYIANNI


now is familiar with andin love with everythingGreek, both ancient andmodern. Tony feels thatin many ways Lori is“more Greek” than heis. The couple visitsGreece as often as theycan and hope to retirethere. When they gettoo homesick forGreece, they take a tripto Astoria, Queens, NewYork where they canfeel as if they are inGreece. “Except, ofcourse, when the 31sttrain squeals to a stopnearby.”

Before becomingwriters, Lori was a com-puter programmer, andTony was successful asan industrial painterand in other positions.However at one pointthey found their workhad become unfulfill-ing. In a single personaltruth-seeking session,this courageous couplechanged the course oftheir lives. They decided to aban-don the security of their currentjobs and to devote themselves towriting. “Tony was a few years old-er than me then (although he is of-ficially three years younger now),”says Lori.

Like many new writers, theytook on jobs which paid enough tomeet their bills but which allowed

them the time to write. They pub-lished their first book 13 long yearslater. Yet, says Lori, “We would notchange one moment of our strug-gle for fear of upsetting the chainevents that have led us to the com-plete delight and passion and satis-faction that saturates our livesnow.”

The couple began by writing ro-

mance novels because,as they state, “The firstthing any writing in-structor worth her saltwill tell you to do is towrite what you know.And what do we knowbetter than our own on-going romance?” Fromthe very beginning, how-ever, largely due toTony’s influence, saysLori, mystery and sus-pense always found away into their book. “Soit was a given that whenour stories for Harlequinbegan getting longer andmore complicated thatwe would go the mysteryroute. Sofie is a naturalevolution of sorts. ... Ourdesire (was) to viewGreek American life fromour son’s viewpoint.Sofie, simply put, is thedaughter we never had.So we married the twoelements (our interest inboth writing mystery andin Greek American cul-ture) and Sofie was the

result.”The third Sofie novel, “Foul

Play,” is schedule to be released inMay 07; the fourth remains un-named. The authors promise it willbe a little lighter and full of well-researched spooky and quirkyGreek superstitions. They have alsocontracts for four additional booksand, says Lori, there are “another

27 unpublished manuscripts lan-guishing in the attic with the dustmites.”

For further information on theCarrington books (ordering infor-mation, reviews and discounts),their travel schedule and how theirwriting contributes to admirablecharitable endeavors, visitwww.toricarrington.net orwww.sofiemetro.com. Like theirwriting, Lori and Tony’s web pagesare full of life. They include per-sonal messages from the two au-thors as well as their favoriterecipes. Even if your “yiayia”makes the best Greek food in town,you may want to check out Loriand Tony’s fare. They make theirown bread and their youngest son,Tim, travels one and half hourseach way to join them for home-made Sunday dinner. “And he’s al-ways sent home with enough foodto last him until his next visit,” saysTony. How Greek is that?

The Sofie books are funny, sexy,witty and full of action. However,they provide more than superficialentertainment. Like most goodbooks, they make one laugh, cry,and expand one’s knowledge of theworld and of one’s self.

Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D. is acounseling psychologist and theauthor of 13 books on a varietyof psychological topics, as wellas of “Growing Up Greek in St.Louis” (Arcadia Publishing,1998). Visit www.matsakis.comfor further information.

The third Sofie novel, “Foul Play,” is scheduled to bereleased in May 07.

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"...I asked them whether this wasthe road to Karava. The oldest of the three smiled even more broadlyand said, 'Monsieur, this is not Paris.There is only one road to Karava."

Harris “Bud” George’s collection of stories be-gins with his orphaned father coming toAmerica at the age of 16 and becoming thefirst Greek businessman in Towson in 1912.His mother’s imperatives about growing up in

the Baltimore Greek community, his brother’s establishment of what is today thelargest Greek Orthodox parish library in the western hemisphere, and his sisters’first attempt at Greek cooking and monomania about teaching English vocabu-lary are engagingly chronicled, as are the author’s fascination with Kythera -theisland of his parents’ birth- and its lore. George shows how Greek as a secondlanguage is handy, how the Greek character manifests itself in airline passengers,in Greek newspaper reporters, and in the Greeks of Capetown, Manila and Gdan-sk. Stories of his years in the US Navy offer amusing adventures in Capetown,Ceylon, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, Portugal, and Greece. Also includedare the author’s most challenging experiences practicing law for 47 years - fromforeclosing a mortgage on a herd of cattle to representing the accused in Mary-land’s First Savings and Loan scandal.

Towson, Maryland native Harris “Bud” George finished his DukeUniversity undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa work at the age of 19 andpassed the Maryland Bar at 22. He then entered the US Navy, follow-ing which he has practiced law.

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By Penelope KarageorgeSpecial to The National Herald

You don’t have to be fromNewark, N.J. to fall in love with“Remembering Newark’s Greeks:An American Odyssey” by An-gelique Lampros. The book, 192pages, alive with more than 300photographs and a wealth of inter-views with dozens of individuals,offers a magnificent microcosm ofGreek American immigrant society.It’s a delicious baklava of a bookwith its layers of memory, captur-ing the warmth, beauty anduniqueness of that largely vanishedworld of Greek Americana andshould resonate for Greek Ameri-cans from California to Maine

Although one of the smallestethnic groups in America, GreekAmericans can take justifiablepride in becoming a huge successstory, attaining the highest educa-tional level of any immigrant groupin the U.S. Spurred to achieve byhard-working, deeply committedparents, many Greek American

doctors, lawyers, scientists, busi-ness titans and media giants todaywax nostalgic about sweeping thefloor in their dad’s restaurant, theatonal wail and beat of rebetikomusic at church dances, the disci-pline of Greek school. “Remember-ing Newark’s Greeks” evokes thatworld and could, in fact, offer amodel to other communities tohurry out and collect photographsand reminiscences before they dis-appear.

Author Angelique Lampros, aretired teacher and administratorwho grew up in Newark, and co-curator Peter Markos, also aNewark native, teacher and admin-istrator, spent almost seven yearstracking down stories, reminis-cences, artifacts and photographsfor the book. The project beganeight years ago when Lampros re-ceived a call from Markos, whomshe had known as far back as Greekschool. He had just read a bookabout Newark’s “Little Italy, ” andasked, “How about doing a bookon Newark’s Greeks?”

“I thought it was a great idea,”Lampros recalls. “It would be away of honoring our parents andremembering those people who

gave us what we have today, tohonor their legacy. From the begin-ning, I felt strongly that the bookshould not be written from the per-spective of a historian. Instead Iwanted to capture the words, thefeelings and the images of the peo-ple themselves.”

At first Lampros and Markos at-tempted to get a grant from theNew Jersey Historical Society tofund their efforts. Despite being re-buffed, they put together a plan ofaction. “We started contacting theolder people who we knew and weinterviewed them,” Lampros says.“We traveled the state of New Jer-sey seeking out Greek Americanswho had lived in Newark andtalked with them. We went with atape recorder. They had wonderfulstories to tell, as you can see fromthe quotes from their interviews. Itranscribed all the interviews andput them aside. We also collectedphotographs.

“We sent out letters to churchesin the area, with interview ques-tions, and asking people to send intheir photographs. They respond-ed. They dropped off the pho-tographs at my house, or we pickedthe photographs and interviewed

the people. At one point, my homewas filled with over 500 pho-tographs.”

While the interview process wasgoing on, they connected with Dr.Conant Price, a professor at Rut-gers University, who introducedthem to Charles Cumming, assis-tant director at the New Jersey In-formation Center. “Cumming was aNewark historian, a wonderful,wonderful man who passed away ayear ago, which was devastating,”Lampros says. “Both Price andCumming became really interestedin the project, and Charles said,‘Let’s do an exhibit at the NewarkPublic Library.’ It took about a yearto set it up.”

Working towards the library ex-hibit, Lampros and Markos contin-ued tracking down photographs.“Some people were reluctant topart with their pictures,” Lamprosrecalls. “Others were eager andsaid, well, when you’re finishedwith this, will you return them?Others said, “You can keep them.”What we told people was – youdon’t want to someday see yourphotographs in a flea market, andhave somebody else claim it’s theirfamily! If we keep the photos at the

New Book Extols Legacy Of Newark’s GreeksBeautiful Evocation of Almost Vanished Immigrant Society

“RememberingNewark’s Greeks: AnAmerican Odyssey”By Angelique Lampros

Donning Publishing, 192 pages, $40

Students of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church School are poised and ready to perform in a Christmaspageant, ca. 1932-1933 at the Ukranian Stritch Hall in Newark, New Jersey. Recalls Dr. Charles Coniaris:“We would memorize Greek plays, ten to twelve pages long, and perform, even if we didn’t know whatthe words meant, and present them to the community.” First row from left: Andrew, Venetia, and CharlesConiaris. Second row: Manny Lamprou, Stella Sakelakos, Rose Billias, Greek School teacher Mr. Karan-dreou, Harriet Vretos, Anthoula Koronakos and Irene Pawlakos. Row three: Alice Pawlakos, Nick Lam-prou, _____ Manos, Faye Chletsos, John Coniaris and Honey Vretos.

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF THE CONIARIS FAMILY

The Tsotakos family, from left: Georgia, Stella, and Pauline Tsotakos,with Anthony Panagakos and Michael Pontiakos, ca 1930s.

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF MARY THOMAS MARALAKOS


Newark Public Library, they will bethere a 100 years from now. Andthis became our purpose.”

The Hellenic Heritage Fund atthe Newark Public Library was es-tablished to collect the materialand preserve it there. “The infor-mation was placed on microfilmand digitized,” Lampros says.“These are the voices, the imagesof the people of Newark, the GreekAmericans of Newark, and this in-formation will be available to theirchildren and children’s children atthe Newark Public Library forever.”

The exhibit opened to great ac-claim in 2002 at the Newark PublicLibrary. “It was a year getting theexhibit ready,” Lampros says. “Wewere at the library all the time,working with the professionalsthere. The library applied forgrants and received a grant fromthe New Jersey State HumanitiesOrganization. They themselvesadded funds to the project. Itopened on October 21 when about500 people came to the library,even from as far away as Washing-ton, D.C., old-time Newarkers.

“The library in itself is beautiful,and this exhibit covered threefloors. It was really wonderful.While the exhibit was on, Peter and

I would go down and give tours topeople who requested them. Weaddressed the Friends of theNewark Public Library and the

Newark Historical Society. The ex-hibit was so successful – thousandsof people came – that the libraryextended it for an extra month.”

When the exhibit closed, Lam-pros still yearned for a book withphotographs and interviews, abook that would capture precious

memories. “We sent a proposal tothe Rutgers University Press, and Igave them three chapters, but theyhad a different vision of what theywanted to the book to be,” Lam-pros recalls. “They wanted more ofa historical perspective. So I putthat aside, and began working onmy idea, a commemorative bookthat would collect the voices andimages of the people.”

With the encouragement of theNewark Public Library, and thehelp of good friends including twoprofessional editors, and otherswho volunteered their services,Lampros was able to completewhat amounted to an inspiredwork. Ultimately the book waspublished with backing from theMavrode Family, the Upper BucksMedical Associates and the En-doscopy Center in Sellersville, Pa.

At the first book signing, held atSnuffy’s Pantagis Renaissance, aGreek restaurant, more than 200people showed up, and it turnedinto a gala event. John T. Cunning-ham, who wrote the book’s intro-duction, told Lampros it was the“best book party I’ve ever attend-ed.”

Statistically, the Greeks were a

In 1930, George’s Restaurant at 85 Halsey Street, Newark, provides a bustling scene. Mr. Capetanos canbe seen in the left foreground, and Mrs. Capetanos at the back.

www.papadatos.com

Best wishesto the

Greek American

authors

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF TOM CAPETANOS

Continued on page 8

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small portion of Newark’s popula-tion, numbering about 8,000 attheir peak in the early 20th centu-ry. But their hard work and indus-try, commitment to community andfamily, helped shape the city. Be-tween the 1920s and 1950s, 65percent of the city’s downtowneateries were owned and run byGreeks.

In the book’s Forward, Dr.Clement Alexander Price, a Rut-gers-Newark Professor of Historyand the Director of the Institute onEthnicity, Culture and the ModernExperience, states: “The Greek ex-perience in Newark enlivened thecity during a period of economicpromise and cultural diversity thatunfolded from the late 19th Centu-ry through the first three decadesof the 20th Century. It was thecity’s Golden Era.”

Price points out that the growthof the public sphere in education,the arts and cultural institutionsmade Newark a more diverse andcosmopolitan place. “The Greekimmigrants and their progenywere hardly bystanders to thisemerging change in the wayNewarkers entered the 20th Centu-ry. They established a foundationfor a community of remarkable co-hesions and purpose.”

At one time, all the immigrants

who arrived in New Jersey seemedto live in Newark or close enoughto attend St. Nicholas Greek Ortho-dox Church and send their childrento Greek school. This was the “hub”and forms a centerpiece for thebook that begins with “TheOdyssey,” arrival in America, andmoves on through the years, in-cluding World War II. The book in-cludes some wonderful surprises,including the menu from the Greeksteamship, the Byron, and the noteon it written by Mary Vasilow Pan-telis, age 16: “O Byron, the shipthat brought me to this black, for-eign land in 1927.”

Newark’s Greek immigrants em-braced America, the land that wasthe living embodiment of theGreek idea of democracy and weredetermined to make good. “My fa-ther came as a young boy in 1896from Tripoli and began by shiningshoes in a shoeshine parlor. Atnight, all the boys slept in the backroom. My father slept under thesink. There was no heat, the waterdripped on his head, and it wasfreezing. He vowed the would nev-er be poor like that again, ” saidDorothea Adams Pantages.

Author Lampros grew up living“over the store” on the third floorheadquarters of the Boston CandyCompany, owned by her father.Her godfather owned the building,so it was “all in the family.” Al-

though Lampros did not usuallywork in the store because of herparents’ concern that she devoteherself to her studies, she recallsthe hustle and bustle of Easter

when everyone pitched in.“At Easter time everyone

worked in the store,” Lamprossays. “We had the whole section inthe middle of the store filled with

Angelique Lampros, a retiredteacher and administrator whogrew up in Newark, is the authorof “Remembering Newark’sGreeks: an American Odyssey.”Together with Peter Markos, shecurated the acclaimed exhibit onNewark's Greeks, which was pre-sented in 2002 at the NewarkPublic Library.

The Theophiles children, Constantine with twins Angeliki and Ange-lo, pose in Greek costumes, ca. 1920s.

Continued from page 7

New Book Extols Legacy Of Newark’s Greeks

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF PERRY P. ZAGOREOS

COURTESY OF ANTIGONE LAMPROS

TO STUDENTS AND RESEARCHERS OF HELLENIC ANCESTRY

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Awarded to high school seniors (3) who residein the New York Tri-State area. Must be top 10%of class or over 1900 SAT and family annualincome under $70K.Deadline for applications is May 1st, 2008.

The Dr. Fred Valergakis Research Grant (several)is presented annually to researchers and graduatestudents of Hellenic ancestry who are studyingMedical, Biological or Social Sciencesat an accredited institution.

The Dr. Papanicolaou Heritage Grant (1)is presented annually to a researcher who is studyingClassical and Byzantine Hellenic Culture.

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planks and stands, with chocolaterabbits, chocolate Easter eggs. Mymother would help wrap things up.My godparents – everyone wasthere.”

Lampros, who graduated fromMontclair State University andearned an M.A. at George Washing-ton University, has been involvedwith Greek activities, ranging fromthe Daughters of Penelope toteaching Sunday school, all herlife, and takes enormous pride inher Hellenic heritage. The bookhelped fulfill a dream for herselfand co-curator Markos. “I felt thebook had to tell a story in se-quence,” Lampros says. “Why peo-ple came here and why they endedup in Newark, and how they wentabout building their businesses,their involvement, how importantthe family was. The anecdoteshave been the most important part.To put the book together, I wentthrough every one of the inter-views. The narrative is just to tie inthe memories and quotes – to pullit all together. The important partof the book is the images and voic-es of the people.

“I’m just sorry we didn’t startthis earlier, because so many of thepeople we interviewed have passedaway. I would say about half ofthem. This is a positive book. Ittells a story. It tells what happened.Life was difficult. This is the immi-grant’s experience, whether it’sNewark, or Chicago, or Salt LakeCity or Vancouver. They had a diffi-cult time, but they made some-thing of their lives. They did it fortheir families and their children.

“St. Nicholas Church will beleaving Newark. It’s sad, becausethat’s where our parents were andour religion flourished. But wehave the book, and we’ve had awonderful reaction to it.”

Lampros, Markos and all of theother people involved with this la-bor of love worked without remu-neration, and all profits from thebook, well worth the price of$40.00, will go directly into theHellenic Heritage Fund. The bookcan be purchased from the NewarkPublic Library ( the first book eversold by the Library) or by visitingthe Library’s website atwww.npl.org/greek or by calling973-733-7793. It’s also availableat The Greek Store in Kenilworth,N.J.

A freelance writer, PenelopeKarageorge is the author of twonovels and a poetry collection,“Red Lipstick and the Wine-DarkSea” (Pella). She is working withZikos Tasios of Tasios Produc-tions, Athens, to produce herfilm script, “Drinking the Sun,” aromantic comedy set on the is-land of Lemnos and is currentlyseeking a U.S. co-producer.

Four young beauties perform a Greek dance at the Griffith Buildingon Broad Street, Newark, in June, 1936. Adam A. Adams (Adamopou-los), a “Horatio Alger” success story who rose from shoeshine boy toowner of a chain of movie theatres, contributed the classical Greekcostumes (bobby sox courtesy of the dancers). From left: ElinoreSaratoes, Kay Tsotakos, Ethel Juvelis and Eva Halulakos.

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF THE JUVELIS FAMILY

Surrounded by hat blocks and blocked hats, Nicholas Gianaris standsbehind the counter of his Automatic Hat Shop at 51 West MarketStreet in this 1940s photo. Newark boasted several hat cleaning andblocking establishments operated by Greek Americans including theContinental Hat Renovating Shop owned by the dapper Dimitri Met-sopoulos, known as the “Kaiser” because he waxed the tips of his lux-urious moustache.

HELLENIC PUBLIC LIBRARY: HERITAGE COLLECTION/COURTESY OF MARY G. MAROULAKOS

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By Yiorgos AnagnostouSpecial to The National Herald

No single story can capture theexperience of early immigrantGreek America. Men who toiled inthe mines and railroad construc-tion under dangerous labor condi-tions experienced immigration dif-ferently than those who ownedsmall businesses. Men and womeninteracted with different Americanpublics. Among women, those whowere consumed by tradition-bounddomestic chores saw America froma different angle than thosewomen who worked as wage la-borers. And the experience of thosewho conformed to dominant ideascannot possibly compare to thosewho resisted what they saw as anunjust status quo.

Researchers have started to ex-plore this fascinating heterogene-ity. They have been focusing onpreviously neglected topics such aswomen, the working-class, culturaland political activists, and artists.At last, there is an interest in recov-ering views that have been sociallymarginalized, and in the processunderstanding the past from multi-ple perspectives.

“Demetrios is Now Jimmy” con-tributes to our understanding ofone aspect of Greek America’s vari-

ety, regional diversity. Of course,the book addresses a well-coveredtopic, the economically successfulmale immigrant. But it also takesup an understudied topic with re-gional focus: Greek America in theAmerican South during the JimCrow era. This was a period of le-gal racial segregation (1876-1965)characterized by anti-foreignismand brutal racist violence.

This historical study is based onthe author’s doctoral dissertation.Lazar “Larry” Odzak (b.1933) iscurrently an archivist-historian atthe North Carolina State Archives.He received his Ph.D. degree inU.S. History from Strassford Uni-versity (London, England, 2003).His book, “Demetrios is Now Jim-my,” follows academic conven-tions. The author sorts through aconsiderable corpus of scholarlyworks on immigration and ethnici-ty, whose citations are dispersedthroughout the book. A readableaccount, the book provides usefularchival information and oral testi-monies on regional history. Com-parative in scope, it dedicateswhole chapters to immigrant adap-tations in cities such as New Or-leans, Birmingham and TarponSprings. Furthermore, a chapterexploring the “Formation and De-velopment of Greek ImmigrantCommunities in the AmericanSouth” includes discussions andcomparisons of the cases of At-lanta, Jacksonville Savannah,Charleston, Raleigh, Charlestonand Mobile.

The book discusses the transfor-mation of the Southern Greeksfrom immigrants to ethnic Ameri-cans through “selective adapta-tion.” The argument here is thatimmigrant adaptations must beseen as a process of acculturation,not wholesale assimilation. A keyto the selective retention and inter-generational transmission of eth-nicity was the early establishmentof ethnic and religious institutions.To this end the author discusses thechanges that defined two promi-nent institutions, American Hel-lenic Educational Progressive Asso-ciation (AHEPA) and the Greek Or-thodox Church, up to the mid-1960s. A chapter entitled “Frater-nal Bonding and Conservatism:Jimmy Joined AHEPA” situates theestablishment of AHEPA and itssubsequent development withinthe region’s racial politics. Anotherchapter, entitled “From ByzantineRites to Civil Rights,” discusses thetransformation of the Greek Ortho-dox Church in the South from im-migrant to ethnic.

Because “Demetrios is Now Jim-my” is a book published by a non-

university press, I will not review itin terms of its scholarly omissionsand limitations. Though I will referto some of its shortcomings, cri-tiquing will not be my main focus. Iwill not reflect, for example, why abook that situates immigrants inthe context of race relations andmobility utterly ignores importantacademic sources on “white eth-nics,” labor struggles, and race.Rather, I wish to discuss the contri-butions that this work makes to ourunderstanding of one aspect ofGreek American history, namelyimmigrant socioeconomic mobility,and to illuminate the implicationsof its findings for future research.

A particular research questionanimates the author’s project. Theprimary goal is to test the hypothe-sis known as the “Southern vari-ant” of the Greek immigrant expe-rience. First proposed by sociolo-gist Charles Moskos, the hypothe-sis states, “Greeks in the Southachieved economic and residentialupward mobility faster and ingreater proportion than Greekselsewhere in the United States.”Odzak builds on empirical evi-dence to prove that this hypothesisis true in regards to self-employedimmigrants, but not the workingclass. He compares the “ratio ofGreek-owned businesses, exclud-ing the itinerant vendors, to the to-tal Greek population” in Northerncities to corresponding data inSouthern cities, concluding thatthe percentage of self-employed

immigrants was higher in theSouth. He also cites the early“Greek family formation in theSouth,” and the Southerners high-er rates of immigrant intermar-riage with whites as further evi-dence of mobility. The author be-lieves that the “Southern variant”was caused by a combination offactors. They include: the impor-tance of “timi” (honor), whichprodded them to succeed in theworkplace, the relentless pressureto assimilate, the acceptance ofthose who assimilated as “white,”and the smaller numbers of theGreeks in the south, which discour-aged the formation of immigrantenclaves.

In his inquiry, the author placesthe immigrant Southern experi-ence within the context of econom-ic and racial relations in the region.On the one hand, he observes, thevision of an industrialized “NewSouth” brought about dramaticpopulation growth in cities andtowns of the region. The exampleof Tampa, Florida, illustrates thescale of urban transformation. Thetown’s population grew from about5,500 in 1890 to nearly 38,000 in1910. This growth in turn createdan urgent demand for a substantialservice sector: groceries, cafes,quick lunch stores, dry cleanersand shoeshine parlors among oth-ers. The prospect of becoming aself-employed business ownercatering to white society attractedto the South immigrants of various

nationalities. There is mention ofJews, Italians, Syrians and Greeks,among others, but not of Asian im-migrants. Here one must stress thatJim Crow segregation did not ex-tend this crucial opportunity toAfrican Americans. Therefore, itwas immigrants who were recruit-ed to fill this much-coveted eco-nomic niche.

The author points to the impor-tance of cultural values to explainimmigrant success. He covers awell-trod territory when he sug-gests that immigrants strove formobility because failure wouldhave compromised their “timi”(honor), shaming them in the eyesof their family and community.Thus, according to the author, itwas the cultural dictates of thehonor system that fuelled the de-sire to succeed at any cost. Conse-quently, hard work to the point ofsacrifice, dogged persistence andfrugality, are seen as causes that re-sulted in the much-sought-after fi-nancial security, even prosperity,among early immigrants.

One of the author’s contribu-tions rests in showing how erro-neous it is to explain ethnic successon the basis of cultural valuesalone. The discussion makes itclear that one must account howother variables in the host society –institutional and everyday racismfor example – may propel somegroups to the path of upward mo-bility, while barring this opportuni-ty to others. Odzak takes into ac-count how the pervasive racismagainst African Americans in theAmerican South favored immi-grant mobility.

In discussing the issue of maleimmigrant success in the context ofeconomic and racial relations, thisbook parts from traditional GreekAmerican historiography. The freshperspective is that in racially segre-gated regions it was the immi-grants who were seen as the solu-tion to a growing demand for ser-vice businesses, not local racial mi-norities. Odzak suggests that therelatively light tone of the immi-grants’ skin provided the ticket forentering this economic niche inwhite society from which AfricanAmericans were excluded. Hewrites, “skin color helped a largeproportion of the first generationGreek migrants to the Southerncities to achieve economicprogress.” In other words, the“whiteness” of the immigrantsworked as a racial privilege; itgranted them a competitive advan-tage in a labor market that relegat-ed African Americans to menialjobs. Therefore, the roots of immi-grant success were partly embed-

Explaining Immigrant Mobility: Don’t Neglect the Race Factor

This is Alex Kontos, circa 1908. Kontos started by peddling fruit whenhe first arrived in the U.S. Then about 1902, he contracted with a Mo-bile distributor to sell wholesale bananas in Birmingham. He had a vir-tual monopoly on the selling of this fruit in the Birmingham area andbecame known as the “Banana King.”

“Demetrios is NowJimmy: GreekImmigrants in theSouthern UnitedStates, 1895-1965” By Larry Odzak

Monograph Publishers, 260 pages,$24.95

ded in a system of racial discrimi-nation.

The historical record is unequiv-ocal here. Immigrant mobility wasnot achieved in an environment forequal opportunity but occurred atthe expense of African Americans.This realization must put to restthe popular belief that immigrantsself-propelled themselves to mobil-ity, that they rose exclusively ontheir own bootstraps. It countersthe self-congratulatory rhetoricone hears so often in accountsabout “white ethnic” success.

What about Southern anti-for-eignism? In what ways did it affectthe immigrants? The author makesa strong case that the integrationof immigrants was conditional. Inexchange for acceptance as “white”they were pressured to publiclydisplay total conformity to thedominant culture. The case of acafé owner in Pensacola, a certainChris Lochas who was accused forviolating Federal Law and was runout of town by the Ku Klux Klan, il-lustrates the degree of public in-timidation. Those who did not con-form were targeted as unwantedcultural and racial outsiders.

The result of this climate of fearwas the rampant Anglicization ofnames, adoption of the manner-isms and the ideologies of the dom-inant society, unconditional sup-port of 100% Americanism, anden-mass joining of American frater-nal organizations. It was this ruth-less pressure to conform, the au-thor suggests, that contributed to

the immigrants’ upward mobility. However, conformity was not

merely limited to outward appear-ances in manners, dress andspeech. Most significantly, the im-migrant experience in the Ameri-can South entailed a momentoushistorical compromise: compliancewith the racial status quo of the re-gion. Acceptance of a system ofracial oppression was the tremen-dous cost that immigrants had topay in order to ensure their busi-ness prospects. In the chapter onAHEPA, Odzak provides examplesof the relationship between the all-powerful Klan and the Greek immi-grants, showing how immigrantsinternalized and enacted the raciallogic of Jim Crow. In addressingthis hugely sensitive issue, the au-thor is ambivalent. On the onehand, he embarks on an internalcritique of the organization (theauthor mentions his affiliation withAHEPA in the dust jacket of thebook), expressing discomfort inview of the fact that George Wal-lace, Alabama’s segregationist gov-ernor, became an AHEPA honorarymember in the spring of 1964. Onthe other hand, he rushes to de-fend the immigrant acceptance ofJim Crow as a pragmatic, “prudentobservance of the American South-ern custom of segregation.”

The author sets himself the am-bitious goal of covering 70 years ofGreek immigrant adaptation in theSouth. But his discussion of thesecond and third generation is waytoo general and often sketchy. The

aim to identify historical patternsand to paint history with broadstrokes occludes particular events,everyday situations and minute in-cidents that do not fit the generalpattern. One wishes, for example,that the author had dedicatedfuller attention to the complexityof the racial situation in the South.It is well known that Greek immi-grants elsewhere in the UnitedStates were initially classified asnon-whites by many social scien-tists and the wider public. In theracially hierarchical taxonomy ofthat era they were seen as inferiorto whites but superior to otherracial groups such as Asian immi-grants and African Americans.Scholarly studies on this subject

convincingly show that occupa-tion, participation in labor politics,and resistance to assimilationserved as important criteria to clas-sify immigrants as non-white in theAmerican West and elsewhere. Un-fortunately, the book pays onlyscant attention to how this racialdynamic played out in the South. Itsimplifies a vastly complex racialsituation into a binary –“black andwhite” – system, where “the signifi-cant presence of blacks tended toraise white immigrants to the nextrung.” The author ignores the pres-ence of immigrants from Asia anddoes not elaborate on the “non-white” classification of and hierar-chies among immigrants fromSoutheast Europe and the MiddleEast. He provides only a tantalizingexample – the case of Lochaswhose lack of acculturation wasequated with a “non-white” status.But because the focus of the bookis on the “successful,” acculturatedmale businessman, there is no at-tempt to document what happenedto those who refused to assimilate.This inattention is illustrated in theunfortunate choice of words theauthor uses to describe unassimi-lated immigrants. In describingthem as those who “were not ableor skillful enough to show that theywere ‘white’ and 100 percentAmerican,” he fails to recognizethose immigrants who consciouslyresisted assimilation.

A number of questions couldguide future research. Did sectorswithin the immigrant community

in the South (women, the workingclass, or wage laborers who even-tually became small-business own-ers, for example) hold alternativevisions of success? Did they resistracism and its cultural counterpart,100% Americanism, embracing al-ternative visions of a socially andeconomically just American soci-ety? There is tantalizing evidenceof resistance, when, for example,the author mentions in passingthat “few brave voices (within theGreek community) were openlyraised” in support of civil rights inthe South. But the reader is leftwanting more. Who resisted andhow? How did public opposition tothe racial status quo affect one’slife?

To answer these questions, re-searchers must seize the momentand shift attention away from themodel of the economically “suc-cessful” male toward the study ofthose individuals or groups whosesuccess entailed a vision and com-mitment to a more just society. Weall stand to gain by identifyingthese unexplored pasts and by fig-uring out how these pasts can be ofvalue to Greek America today.

Yiorgos Anagnostou is an associ-ate professor in the ModernGreek Program at Ohio StateUniversity. His book, “Contoursof ‘White Ethnicity’: PopularEthnography and the Making ofUsable Pasts in Greek America,”is forthcoming from Ohio Uni-versity Press.


Larry Odzak is currently anarchivist-historian at the NorthCarolina State Archives, and avisiting scholar at the Universityof North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

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By E.G. VallianatosSpecial to The National Herald

According to the Roman poetHorace, 65-8 BCE, Hellas con-quered her wild Roman conqueror.The Greeks had long-standing rela-tions with the Romans, building“poleis” in Italy and Sicily as earlyas the eighth century BCE. The Ro-mans borrowed their alphabet, artand religion from the Greeks and,in time, their athletics.

Greeks used athletics to expresstheir political and religious identi-ty, including their adoration ofmanliness as virtue, which they ex-pected of their athletes. Exercisingin the nude out in the open andcompeting during religious festi-vals was both an act of piety to-wards the gods and a characteristicof being Greek. Like philosophy, lit-erature, science, democracy andthe dramatic theater, athletics wasa Greek creation that distinguishedGreeks from non-Greeks.

According to Zahra Newby,Greek influence, including Greekathletic influence, among the Ro-mans did not flow without prob-lems. There were tensions betweenGreeks and Romans. The Romans,after all, destroyed Greek freedom,annexing Greece in 146 BCE. Butdespite the difficulties of the rela-tionship, including the misuse ofGreek athletics by Romans, Greekculture mattered to the Roman rul-ing class.

Zahra Newby’s “Greek Athleticsin the Roman World” is a wonder-ful, lavishly illustrated, and pio-neering book, an original scholarlystudy documenting the far-reach-ing impact Greek athletics had inthe Roman Empire. Romans adopt-ed and adapted Greek athletics forsports, cultural elegance, pleasure,and politics. The emperor, saysNewby, put himself “at the veryheart of Greek festival culture,”holding the keys to the Greek ath-letics becoming a measure of somekind of Hellenization of the rulingclass. A city that wanted to start a“crown” or “sacred” game had tohave imperial approval. So com-munities in the Roman Empire,both Greek and non-Greek, madeGreek athletics a badge of identity,distinguishing themselves fromothers in the Mediterranean.

Greek athletics was especiallyimportant to the Greeks living un-der Roman domination. The Pan-hellenic games took their mindsaway from the harsh political reali-ty governing their lives, allowingthem to celebrate their commonculture.

Pausanias, a second centuryGreek geographer from Asia who

occupies a central role in Newby’sstudy, documented the Greek na-ture and seminal importance ofathletics in Greek culture. He trav-eled extensively in mainlandGreece. His (“Periegesis Hellados”(“Guide to Greece”) remains one ofthe best descriptions and historiesof the country. He says one seesmany wonderful sights and hearsmany wonders in Greece, thoughone could find nothing more divinethan the rites at Eleusis and theathletic contest at Olympia.

At Eleusis the Athenians cele-brated the Eleusinian Mysteries, afall festival to praise of the godsDemeter and Dionysos for thecrops that had just been sown andto seek their blessings for a goodlife. Olympia hosted the Panhel-lenic Olympics, which celebratedthe virtue of manliness in athleticcompetition and Greek identity.

Pausanias anchors athletics atthe core of Hellenism, givingOlympia, as a result, the center ofthe Greek world. This was wherethe Greeks came together for theirPanhellenic dreams, worshippingZeus, surrounded by hundreds ofbeautiful statues and magnificenttemples, admiring their pastachievements, feeling good aboutbeing Greek. History was alive inOlympia, talking to the Greeks in away they could understand toowell. In addition, “poleis” erectedstatues of their Olympic victors athome, thus preserving their con-nection to Olympia – and theirmemory of Hellenism.

Newby is right to suggest thatGreek athletics for the Greeks inthe Roman Empire was essential“in the creation of good citizen-sol-diers, civic festivals, or the Helleniclifestyle while incorporating andcelebrating the contemporaryworld.” While Greek athletics inGreece accommodated the partici-pation of Roman athletes, it was afulfillment for the Greeks alone.The Romans, Newby says, failedmaking the connection betweenvictory and virtue; and neither didthe Romans consider the trainingof athletes at the gymnasia as anecessary step to the upbringing ofsoldiers and citizens.

Unfortunately, imperial Romeadopted Christianity as the statereligion in the fourth century, apolicy, which in my opinion, hadcatastrophic consequences for theGreeks, their civilization, and, ofcourse, athletics. In 393, the Chris-tian Emperor Theodosios I abol-ished the Olympics. Christianitytriumphed in Europe at the ex-pense of both Greek and Romanculture, indeed precipitating thefall of Rome to the barbarians in

409. The Eastern Graeco-Roman Em-

pire or Byzantium survived downto 1453 and Greek culture, in verylimited quantities, survived largelyunderground. We waited a millen-nium of darkness for the rediscov-ery of Greek and Roman culture inthe Renaissance, a period startingin the fourteenth century Italy.

The “Later Travels” by Cyriac ofAncona (Ciriaco de Pizzecolli,1391-1452) is a great documentabout the passion of the Renais-sance for the Greeks, why they re-ally mattered.

The protagonist of this extraor-dinary and original story, Cyriac ofAncona, was an Italian merchantand a philhellene scholar who trav-eled through mainland Greece, theAegean islands, and Asia Minor onthe eve of its horrendous collapseof Greece to the Turks in 1453.Everywhere he went he collectedmanuscripts, ancient gems andcoins. He went to Mount Athoswhere he bought most of the worksof Ploutarchos and other Greektexts from the monks of the Iveronmonastery; he examined the textsof Platon, Aristoteles, Galenos(Galen), Hippokrates, Herodotos,Nonnos’ “Dionysiaka,” and Arch-bishop Eustathios’ commentarieson Homeros in the library of GrandLavra.

Cyriac also copied Greek in-scriptions and described the ruinsof temples and theaters, makingsketches and drawings of buildingsand statues. He denounced the ne-glect of his contemporaries for an-tiquities, interpreting that attitudeas “negligence, slothfulness andlack of humane culture.”

He left us with valuable impres-sions of what he saw. For instance,in 1447, he saw Greeks in southernPeloponnesos, near the ancient po-lis of Amathea, celebrating beingGreek with an annual athletic con-test, “androdromon pentastadion,”in which: “They compete in amen’s footrace over a distance offive stadia, which they run bare-foot, mind you, and dressed only ina linen undertunic; and whoeverruns more swiftly and comes infirst is given ten bronze drachmas,which they call ‘hyperpera’; thesecond [is given] five; the third,three; and after that, all the others,in order of finishing, a little cash ora quantity of Hyrcanian meat.”

At another site, this one nearthe gymnasium of Sparte, hecopied a Greek inscription from amarble base: “The city (honors) M.Aurelios Aristokrates, son ofDamainetos, priest for his family,48th from Heracles, 44th from theDioskouroi, permanent gym-nasiarch … incomparable citizen.”Herakles was the Greeks’ greatesthero, founder of the Olympics, andson of Zeus. And Dioskouroi (Kas-tor and Polydeukes) were sons ofZeus and native to Sparte.

Cyriac went to Lakonia in orderto see his “very good friend”George Gemistos Plethon, “themost learned of the Greeks in ourtime.” True, Gemistos Plethon(1362-1452) was a Platonicphilosopher who single-handedlytried to resurrect Hellas in Pelo-ponnesos. However, the WesternChristian dismemberment ofByzantium in the thirteenth centu-ry, the ever-present Turkish danger,and the Christian policies of theGreek leaders undermined his ef-forts, crippling his Renaissance.

Cyriac captures the hopeless-ness of Greece in the mid-fifteenthcentury. He says the “once famousLaconian towns” were in “utter col-lapse or demolition,” a calamity noless severe than the moral declineof the Greeks living in the midst ofthose ruins. In 1447, he concludedthat the Spartans had “fallen com-pletely from that famous pristinemoral integrity of the Laconian,Lacedaimonian way of life.” Cyriacreports that “those who dwell inthe Laconian land, on the Spartanfoothill of Mount Taygetus, in thetown of Mistra, men who practice apoor sort of agriculture or com-merce or ignoble trades and everykind of worthless superstitious rite,are ruled by barbarians or by for-eigners.”

No doubt, Cyriac was close tothe ancient Greeks. Cyriac wor-shipped Hermes, Zeus, and theNymphs and Muses, especially

Zahra Newby is senior lecturer inClassics and Ancient History atthe University of Warwick, UK.She read Classics at Oxford Uni-versity before taking her Mastersand Ph.D. at the Courtauld Insti-tute of Art, London.

Greek Athletics and Ruins, Romans and Western Civilization

“Greek Athletics inthe Roman World:Victory and Virtue” By Zahra Newby

Oxford University Press, 314 pages, $ 150

“Cyriac of Ancona,Later Travels” Edited and translated from the Latin by Edward W. Bodnarwith Clive Foss.

Harvard University Press, 459 pages, $29.95


Kalliope and Kymodokea, “themost brilliant and kindly of Posei-don’s Nereids.” Yet he felt comfort-able with Catholicism and EasternOrthodoxy. He was a “lover of an-tiquity,” half polytheist, half Christ-ian, much like the humanists of theRenaissance. His work earned himthe title of the Father of ClassicalArchaeology, influencing more Eu-ropeans to continue his search inthe land of Greece and Rome, slow-ly resurrecting our understandingof the genius of Greek culture.

But Cyriac was no apoliticalacademic. He cared for the Greeksof his time as well, though heshared the biases of the CatholicWest against them. Before his visitto Peloponnesos, he saw countlessGreek women and girls and boysbeing sold like cattle in the marketsof Macedonia and Thrace. In Adri-anople, he came across a slavemarket selling thousands ofGreeks. These were the prisonersof the Turks after the 1431 fall ofThessalonike. He rushed to Romewhere he lobbied his friend PopeEugene IV to declare war againstthe Turks, whom he described as“barbarians” and “the cruel de-vourers of Christians.” Eugene fol-lowed Cyriac’s advice. First, he in-vited the Orthodox to join theCatholic, and the churches becameone in 1439, ending the 1054schism. Then, in 1443, the popelaunched a crusade against theTurks, the year Cyriac went toGreece, exploring the country until1449. The letters and diaries of

those years make up the contentsof this memorable volume.

In 1446, Cyriac visited Chiosand, instantly, he fell in love withthe birthplace of Homeros. He wasvery impressed with the global ex-port of the gum, the “glittering

mastic” of Chios. The world, hesaid, “was being filled with thescent of this island’s gift, thiswholesome exhalation.”

In 1447, the state of the Greekworld deteriorated sharply. Cyriaccame across Turks settling Gal-lipoli, a Greek polis facing Asia onthe Hellespont or Dardanelles. Hesays that in Gallipoli he saw “longlines of barbarians laden withbooty,” including Europeans trad-ing with the Turks. He was struckwith sorrow with the “captivesfrom the Greek nation, miserablein their iron chains.” Some of thoseenslaved Greeks told him that theTurks had invaded Peloponnesos,devastating the defensive works atthe Isthmus. Cyriac blames theTurkish invasion of Peloponnesosto the “slothful neglect of ourprinces.” “What an enormity!” hesays. “Alas for the ancient nobilityof our superior race! For I thinkthat the pitiable disaster inflictedon this people by the barbarians –even if they are Greeks and in asense deserve punishment – thatthis lamentable downfall of Chris-tians must be thought of as a seri-ous setback for our religion and agreat humiliation of the Latinname.”

True, the Greeks were about tovanish. Pope Eugene’s crusadeagainst the Turks failed becausethe divided Europeans were un-willing to fight for the Greekswhom they considered hereticsworthy of punishment. They hadconveniently forgotten that the

Greeks’ church had become onewith the church of the Catholics.Officially, Pope Eugene was thepope of the Greeks as well. TheGreeks were to disappear fromChristendom. Byzantium’s fall in1453 dissolved the union of thechurches.

The Renaissance, too, came to apremature end, Christianity silenc-ing it in the late sixteenth century.But the Greek genie was out of thebottle. The texts of the Greeks – therelatively few that survived thefirst Christian fires -- were now inmany published books and dis-persed all over Europe to be easilytossed into flames. So despite theanger of Christianity, inflamed bythe Protestant Reformation, Greekinfluence survived in Western Eu-rope, spreading beyond Florence,Padua, Rome and Venice.

The books under review give usan honest clue of the Prometheanimportance of ancient Hellenic cul-ture and the horrific price Greekspaid for losing their freedom to theRomans and, through them, to theChristians. Greek athletics cush-ioned the conquest of Greece byRome while the ruins of Greek cul-ture, which the Italian merchantCyriac of Ancona studied in the1440s, triggered the Renaissancethat made our world.

E.G. Vallianatos is the author of“The Passion of the Greeks:Christianity and the Rape of theHellenes” (Clock and Rose Press,2006).

Fr. Edward Bodnar, S.J., Profes-sor Emeritus in the Departmentof Classics at Georgetown Uni-versity, is interested profession-ally in the survival and rediscov-ery of Classical Antiquity (archi-tecture, sculpture, inscriptions,coins, gems, manuscripts) in ear-ly Renaissance Italy and the lateByzantine (prior to 1453) Lev-ant, particularly as reported inthe travel-diaries, letters, draw-ings, and other writings of Kyri-akos (Cyriac) of Ancona.

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Athena Batistatos

Maria Castillo

Ioanna Epthimiatos

Nikos Giasemis

Vicki Haskopoulos

Kiriaki Karatzas

Isidora Koutsoulias

Nadia Makos

Demetrios Michel

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Mario Mazidis

Panagiota Theodoridis

Theodoros Dimitrios Vlagakos


By Mark N. LardasSpecial to The National Herald

Asked about the glory that wasGreece, most – including those ofGreek descent – talk about AncientGreece: wise Athens, laconic Spar-ta; or ancient wonders: the Colos-sus of Rhodes, the Statue of Zeus,even the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

We even claim Alexander, de-spite not-quite-Greek Macedonianantecedents. He was so successful,and created the mold from which“live fast, die young, leave beauti-ful memories” would later be tak-en.

Most overlook Byzantium. TheByzantines are often viewed aslosers – beaten by both the barbar-ian West and Islamic East. Or as adistant, romantic destination, as inthe Yeats poem “Sailing to Byzan-tium.” Byzantium is also associatedwith overcomplicated bureaucracy

– “getting my drivers license wasdownright Byzantine.” How impor-tant could the Byzantines be?

Yet Byzantium’s influence livestoday. We see it most directly in theOrthodox Church. A product ofByzantine civilization, it still formsthe core of Greek American her-itage.

Byzantium’s gifts forged themodern world. The record of theiraccomplishments has generallybeen accessible only to scholars,presented in arid papers or convo-luted books. It has rarely been ac-cessible to the general public.

Until “Sailing From Byzantium”appeared, in 2006, that is. In a slimvolume (it contains under 300pages of text) Colin Wells explainshow Byzantium influenced the de-velopment of three of today’s mostimportant civilization: Western Eu-rope, Arab society, and the Slavon-ic world.

Had Byzantium disappearedalong with the Western Roman Em-pire, our world would be much dif-ferent – and much worse. The her-itage of Ancient Rome and Greecewould have been lost.

The Western Renaissance, northe Islamic Enlightenment thatpreceded it, would not have takenplace. Civilization of Russia andEastern Europe would have beendelayed – that part of Europewould have remained Iron Agebarbarians for another 500 years.

Wells shows the gifts that eachneighbor received from Byzan-tium. Like a Byzantine triptych, thebook has three sections, one foreach of Byzantium’s neighbors,where the reader follows the histo-ry of Byzantium’s interactions withand influences upon each neigh-bor.

The gifts were very different,too. Each civilization obtainedwhat interested it most. The Westtook humanism – the basis for to-day’s liberal arts education. Bor-rowings from Ancient Greek litera-ture and humanities – grammar,rhetoric, and philosophy -- fueledthe Renaissance. Eventually thesegifts propelled the west into revo-lutionary advances in both the so-cial and physical sciences that re-main the hallmark of Western civi-lization.

The Arabs extracted Greek sci-ence, medicine and philosophy.This led to the Arabic Enlighten-ment, a golden age of Islamic sci-ence. It gave them a technologicallead over their neighbors – until fa-natics forced the repudiation ofgifts obtained from ancient pagans.

The Slavs, especially the Russ,from which Russia would emerge,adopted Byzantium’s art, music

and religion – as well as Byzan-tine’s fatalism. A combination ofOrthodoxy’s mystical contempla-tion and missionary zeal propelledthe Slavs to dominate the north-eastern quarter of the Eurasiancontinent.

Wells discusses how the affectedcultures acknowledged their bor-rowings from Byzantium. Renais-sance Europe recognized theknowledge that fueled it camefrom Constantinople. Moscow stillstyles itself “The Third Rome,” withConstantinople as the acknowl-edged “Second Rome.”

Yet, as Wells shows in this book,circumstance allowed the breadthand scope of the Byzantium’s influ-ence to be forgotten. Sometimesdistance caused the memory tofade – the English-speaking peo-ples who write most of today’s his-tory had little direct contact withByzantium. Much of the core ofwestern hard science – medicine,astronomy, and physics – has rootsin Islamic science, developed dur-ing the Islamic Enlightenment,which was fueled by Byzantium’sgifts. The Europeans of that timedid not realize where the Arabsgained their knowledge.

Wells also shows the conflictsthat raged within the Byzantine

world, including the tensions be-tween the Hesychasts – who feltthat faith and Orthodoxy were thesolutions to Byzantines problems –and the Byzantine humanists –those that felt that reason alonewas sufficient, when combinedwith the knowledge of the AncientGreeks.

Reason and faith were warp andweft in the fabric of Byzantine soci-ety. Neither Hesychasts nor hu-manists could maintain a healthysociety without the presence of theother group. Wells shows how theincreasing unwillingness to com-promise – by both groups – weak-ened Byzantium.

The book’s greatest irony? TheHesychast triumph over the hu-manists early in the 14th centurywas a major factor in preservingAncient Greek literature the Hesy-chasts despised. Byzantine human-ists departed for Italy with copiesof these ancient books – books thatwould have been destroyed in theIslamic conquest of Constantinoplein 1453 had the humanists wonand stayed.

Wells’ book restores Byzantium tothe prominence that it deserves. Heshows how this civilization fought topreserve its ancient heritage, how itwent through its own sets of dark

Colin Wells has studied with eminent Byzantinist Speros Vryonis Jr.at UCLA and holds an M.A. from Oxford University in Greats (Greekand Latin language and literature). He has spent over a decade lec-turing and writing about history. In "Sailing From Byzantium," Wellsoffers an assessment on Byzantium's impact on the modern world.

A Voyage to a Past that Shaped Our Future

“Sailing FromByzantium: How aLost Empire Shapedthe World” By Colin Wells

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ages and enlightenments, and howthe knowledge it had was passed onto three other civilizations. He doesso in a book that is approachable –and fascinating.

Wells, a self-described WASP,grew up in upstate New York,where he now lives. What drew hisinterest to Byzantium – and write abook like “Sailing From Byzan-tium?” It took 15 years of effort forWells to sell the book to a publisher.To find out, The National Herald in-terviewed Wells.

TNH: How did you connect withByzantium?

CW: I was an English and histo-ry major at UCLA in the 1980s. Forsome reason I signed up for a classin Byzantine history, which was asubject I knew nothing about. I did-n't even know what "Byzantine his-tory" meant. But I got hooked rightaway.

The professor, Speros Vryonis,Jr., reminded me of someone Iknew – the father of my best friend,who belongs to a Greek Americanfamily. Or rather a Greek Canadianfamily – they are from Montreal,and had a summer place in thetown where I grew up in northernNew York. They even shared thesame bad jokes! So there was aGreek American genesis to thebook, in a way.

TNH: Although you never stud-ied under Vryonis as a graduatestudent, you believe Vryonisproved to be one of the most pro-found influences on your educationand approach to history, correct?

CW: I took Vyronis’ three under-graduate Byzantine history classesand then two graduate seminarsthat he offered on historiography.He kindly let me enroll in eventhough I was an undergraduate.

In none of these did the themeof faith and reason come up that Iremember (I got that from readingarticles of his much later). But I didabsorb some aspects of his overallapproach, a sort of rational, evendispassionate, evenhandednessthat I still aspire to in my writing.

For example, in one of the semi-nars we looked at controversial ar-eas of Greek historiography like thefamous ‘racial continuity’ question,which arose after 19th century Eu-ropean scholars disparaged modernGreeks as basically Slavs in racialbackground and therefore not real-ly ‘Greek.’ This was part of the ‘glo-ry that was Greece’ thing taken upby the Germans, the British, andothers.”

After presenting the varioussides of the controversy itself, Pro-fessor Vryonis' response was basi-cally to chuckle at this foolishnessand to observe that the Helleniza-tion of the Slavic immigrants in theGreek mainland merely under-scored the great vitality of Greekculture”.

TNH: Were there other major in-fluences in your study of Byzan-tium?

CW: John Meyendorff, an Or-thodox priest but a fine historian,who like Professor Vryonis focusedon faith and reason in his analysis.One of my great regrets in life isthat I never got to meet Father John(as he was known), who passedaway in the early 1990s, just as Iwas beginning the research for Sail-ing from Byzantium.

Also, a professor of internationalrelations at the London School ofEconomics named Fred Halliday,who emphasizes changing histori-cal circumstances and how theygive greater political traction tosome agendas and less to others. Inmany ways, the overall approach tohistory I take in the book is an ex-tension of some of the argumentsand interpretations of these lasttwo scholars.

TNH: Why did the different cul-tures that were influenced byByzantium take such different di-rections with the information theycollected?

CW: Ultimately, it should be rec-ognized that the younger culturestook as active a role as the Byzan-tines themselves. It wasn't justByzantium passing on its culture,

but these other cultures activelyseeking out those aspects of Byzan-tine culture that really excitedthem. There was as much pull aspush. That such different thingscould be found in Byzantium tellsyou something about its extraordi-nary cultural richness, too.

TNH: If someone, whose inter-est was sparked by “Sailing FromByzantium” wanted to read further,does you have any recommenda-tions?

CW: For a lively read, I'd startwith John Julius Norwich's shorthistory of Byzantium. He's a greatraconteur, and since his books focuson palace intrigue and military his-tory, it would be a good comple-ment to my book.

TNH: Suppose you could hold adinner, inviting five people dis-cussed in his book – with a fewmodern scholars, to season theevening. Who would you invite?

CW: Manuel Chrysoloras (adiplomat and educator who wasthe first modern teacher of AncientGreek in Italy), definitely, since allaccounts describe him as so inter-esting and dynamic. Hunayn ibnIshaq (a Nestorian Christian whotranslated Greek medical and scien-tific works into Arabic), too, to rep-resent the caliphate. Cyprian (a

Bulgarian monk, who introducedthe Russian Orthodox Church toHesychastism), the contemporaryof Chrysoloras. His determinationdid so much to shape the course ofRussian history.

That's one for each section in thebook. For the other two guests, per-haps Patriarch Photius (who insti-tuted the mission of Cyril andMethodius) would have to be invit-ed, just because he's so monumen-tal a figure. I'd probably want to in-vite a modern scholar like N.G. Wil-son, too, who would love to pickPhotius's brain on the state of clas-sical literature in ninth centuryByzantium.

Then maybe an emperor – itwould be a toss-up between Justin-ian, Heraclius, Basil II, Alexius I, orManuel II. Each was a superbleader and a pivotal figure inByzantine history with fascinatinginsights to offer. If I invited ManuelII, maybe I'd invite the pope, too,along with Karen Armstrong (amodern monotheistic theologian),just to stir the pot a bit!

TNH: What is next for you? CW: My next book will be a brief

history of history. It will start fromthe birth of history – withHerodotus and Thucydides, andcome forward to the present day.

History grew out of the ancientGreeks’ attempts to explain the nat-ural in a rational way.”

TNH: A “brief” history? Doesthis mean another attempt to createan approachable book on a difficultsubject?

CW: When I started out, I want-ed to become the Stephen JayGould of Byzantium, the guy whomade a complex and relatively un-known subject into something thata curious general reader could findinteresting and accessible. Now I'veexpanded that ambition a little -- I'dlike to be the Stephen Jay Gould ofhistory as a whole. It seems to mehistory could be better served by itspopular writers. But Byzantine his-tory will always be a touchstone inthat effort. History is a Greek inven-tion, and the Byzantines were theones who carried it on when it dis-appeared in the West.

TNH: With luck, we will notneed to wait another 15 years be-fore the next book appears.

Mark Lardas, a Texan of Greekdescent, was born and grew upin Ann Arbor, Michigan. An engi-neer who works at a major aero-space company, he is also a free-lance writer, amateur historianand model-maker.


By Neni PanourgiάSpecial to The National Herald

“The scene gnaws at me as if Ihave been confronted with this sortof indecency for the first time …Perhaps because this is my city”George Sarrinikolaou writes onpage 43 of his book “Facing Athens:Encounters with the Modern City.”And this sentiment is at the core ofthis book, the sentiment that theauthor encounters all the misery, allthe indecencies, all the cynicismand harshness of life for the firsttime in Athens.

This is a demanding and sophis-ticated book that needs to be con-fronted on its own grounds. GeorgeSarrinikolaou can write, and he canwrite well. His phrases are expertlyturned, his transitions smooth, hiscommand of the English languageastonishing, the emotions that itcan transport to the reader rich anddeep. There are brilliant moments,such as the description of OmonoiaSquare. Yet, there is somethingheavy and unbearable in this book,like a tombstone. In short, there isno joy in this book, with the resultthat one is left recognizing perfectlythe slice of what Sarrinikolaou calls“Athens” (as he talks not about thecity of Athens but the greater ad-ministrative region of the capital)while trying desperately to find therest of the fragments

This is particularly alarming to

me, an Athenian of many genera-tions, making me wonder whetherit is a distorted sense of Athens thatI have or Sarrinikolaou’s Athensthat I do not recognize. The mostdisturbing element of this book isthe impression it gives that there isno place in this city where the psy-che can find some rest from theslaps and miseries that make upmodern every day life the worldover. There are no real friendships,nor relationships that exist outsideeither of the adoration of the in-significant and the superficial (thenight clubs, the men’s groups, theemployer and the immigrant rela-tionship) or outside the cynicismthat Sarrinikolaou has found perva-sive in this city of over four millionpeople, a city certainly on the brinkof ecological collapse. And weknow all this because, as the authormentions on page xii of the Pro-logue, the forces that shape Athenstoday are four and very specific:money, history, immigration, vio-lence.

Sarrinikolaou has bones to pickwith the city, and it is in the lastchapter that the reader finds outwhere the source of his discontentis located: in the experience that hisfamily has had in the city in the fewyears that they lived there. This isone of the strengths of the book,that it does not give it all away fromthe beginning. But we have to waituntil page 114 to be told that thisauthor does have some contactwith his family in Athens, and moreimportantly, that he still has agrandfather in the city. Until thenwe do not know that Sarrinikolaouhas ever visited his grandfather,much less that he cares enough forhim to wait all night long outsidethe operating room while thegrandfather is undergoing surgeryand to be utterly appalled by thebehavior of the internist and thesurgeon who, Sarrinikolaou claims,left the operating room in the mid-dle of the operation to go outsideand remind the family of thearranged bribe in order for them tofinish the operation.

One wonders, however, aboutSarrinikolaou’s emotional reactionto the event. Is his reaction a deeplyfelt, genuine sense of love and af-fection for his grandfather, or is it amoralism that seeks to chastise andexpose Greek doctors for doingthings that doctors in other, civi-lized places would never think ofdoing? Anyone who has been to theemergency room in the U.S. andhas been greeted by the insurancemanager before being seen by adoctor would be hard pressed totalk about such differences, ofcourse. Although later on, on page

122, when his grandfather dies andSarrinikolaou, incongruously (forhis relatives, as he notes) weeps, herecognizes that he does not weepfor his grandfather but that hegrieves “for a lifetime … spentaway from them, for all the years …lived without Grandfather, for allthe time that I can never get back.”

The book is written in 10 chap-ters which, much like the Ten Com-mandments, point out the mortalsins of modern Athens and Atheni-ans: Domestic violence, racism, os-tentation, greed, systemic exclusionof the foreigners, prostitution, cor-ruption, adultery, hatred, hypocrisy.The chapters are the backbone onwhich Sarrinikolaou tries to portraypresent-day Athens while, all thewhile, is trying to figure out whyhis family’s experience of Athenshas been as unbearable as it trulyseems to have been. This is a familythat lived in four different houses infour different neighborhoods in thecourse of ten years: Liosia (a work-ing class neighborhood primarily

squatted by Gypsies and the placeof the city dump, Sarrinikolaounotes, but also the place where in-ternal migrants settled in the1950s), Petroupolis (another work-ing class neighborhood squattedfrom the 1930s to the 1950s, legal-ized after 1955, and with a quarryactive until the 1970s), Dafne (anold working-class neighborhood)and Nea Penteli (an upper middle-class neighborhood built in the1970s on forest land). Precisely be-cause this trajectory is so atypical ina city where most of its residentsowned their houses and had closeties to their neighborhoods, the en-counters of the Sarrinikolaou fami-ly in the different parts of the citymust have been difficult.

The family immigrated to NewYork in 1980, when the author was10 years old, and settled in Astoria.Since then the parents divorced,the father who used to beat his wifereturned to Greece, and the motherand two children remained here.Sarrinikolaou mentions in passingthat he has visited Greece almostevery summer since the year of mi-gration, although there is no men-tion anywhere as to whether thosevisits produced any friendships, ac-quaintances, or closeness with thefamily that had remained in

Athens. This omission allows Sar-rinikolaou to claim an exceptionalposition and voice a particular com-plaint: his encounters for this bookwere all fresh ones, giving him thusthe opportunity to start relation-ships and friendships anew while,simultaneously, excluding him fromthe depth of already establishedfriendships. But one has to wonderabout how available Sarrinikolaoumakes himself to deep relationshipsby shifting positions constantly be-tween being there and not beingthere at the same time. How wouldit be possible for anyone to be botha detached objective observer and aparticipant at the same time? As an-thropologists know, something hasto give: either the claim to objectiv-ity or the claim to belonging to theinner core.

Throughout the book one getsthe impression that Sarrinikolaou’sGreek is on native level, that he hasnot acquired the hesitance of thereturning native language, thatwhen he encounters people there isno trace of an accent or of discon-nect with the current language thatwould betray the fact that he doesnot live in Athens. But by trying tosee what a non-native would see inAthens by traveling through the“other” neighborhoods, thosewhere the tourists and native Athe-nians never go, Sarrinikolaou hasproduced the dialectical opposite,the flip side of what every celebra-tory guide to Athens has produceduntil now: where “good food andgreat music” would appear in anyother guide cheap whiskey and badmusic appears in Sarrinikolaou’s.Where “blue skies and the beautifulParthenon” appear in any Fodor’s,in Sarrinikolaou we encounter dirt,scum, and the kitsch of the Acropo-lis. The result is as superficial andstereotypical as any. The only dif-ference is that Sarrinikolaou looksat other surfaces than Fodor’s does.And he makes mistakes. Pana-thenaikos is not “a third Athenianteam.” Panathenaikos was the firstathletic club to be established inAthens, in 1908, and the “eternal”opponent of Olympiakos. Actuallythe two teams are referred to as the“aionioi,” meaning “aionioi an-tipaloi” (eternal opponents).Athenian soccer was really domi-nated by the adversity of these twomain clubs for the largest part ofthe 20th century until AEK becamea stable enough team to puncturethe scene. If Sarrinikolaou’s visit toAthens for the purposes of this booktook place for three months inspring of 2003 (as he alludes to)Olympiakos was not playing inKalogreza (the Olympic Stadium)but in Rizoupoli, and Olympiakos

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did not tie with Akratitos (the teamfrom Liosia, Sarrinikolaou’s nativeneighborhood) but won 4-0 in Sep-tember 2002 and 5-2 in February2003. The famous tennis club is not

the one of Politeia but of Ekali, andlong before Kifissia was picked forthe summer residences of the Be-nakis, the Deltas, and theDragoumises in the turn of the 20th

century it was a village where Ar-vanites had lived without break forfour centuries.

Do these mistakes matter? Dothey cancel Sarrinikolaou’s experi-ment of producing the most truth-ful account of Athens possible? Dothey take anything away from theliterary value of the book? The re-sponse to these questions is locatedin the project that Sarrinikolaouhas set for himself. Sarrinikolaoucalls on his eyewitness experiencesof the city to account for the validi-ty of his claims. He does not seemto rely on second-hand material. Hehimself goes to the soccer matchwhere he sees AEK soccer fans ex-hibit behavior “straight out of aNazi rally” as he writes. He himselfgoes to Metaxourgeio, the workingclass neighborhood at the center ofAthens where he encounters threemiddle-aged men sitting on thestoop of a house. Through this en-counter with them that lasts for acouple of hours (at most, if thatlong, as he never tells us) he comesaway having decided that theAthenian suspiciousness towardsthe others is not, as Greeks claim,xenophobia, but outright racism.This is not a conclusion at which hearrives through second-hand infor-mation, but one that is securely lo-cated on his own, unmediated ex-perience. He doesn’t rely on the de-scription of others about the en-counter between the filthy rich resi-dents of Politeia and the dirt poorAlbanian day laborers; he gets onthe bus to Politeia and sees the Al-

banians as they leave the mansionswith “dirt caked in the cracks oftheir fingers and under their finger-nails” as he imagines “the mani-cured hand of the villa’s mistressdipping into a Chanel purse to payher Albanian gardener,” and con-cludes that “this Garden of Edenneeds the cheap labor to keep it wa-tered and pruned.” He witnessesthe complete collapse of gender re-lationships and notes that “whatstrikes him in Athens, as opposed tohis other home, New York, is howconspicuous the role of money canbe in sexual relationships.” Sus-pending disbelief for a momentabout the role of money in sexualrelationships in New York and de-ciding not to pose the question ofmarriage as institutionalized prosti-tution (as Sarrinikolaou seems tobe implying), one needs to askwhat are the terms of comparisonof the two settings: the newly richAthenians and the newly rich NewYorkers? The newly rich Atheniansand the off-the-center, intellectualNew Yorkers? Immigrants in theU.S. and immigrants in Greece? It isthis level of superficiality thatmakes the mistakes about Pana-thenaikos, and Ekali, and Kifisiamatter. It is the fact that there issomething that is suspect about hisclaim to the authenticity (andtruthfulness) of his witness experi-ence, not because we, as readersask for such truthfulness, but be-cause he, as the author, has settruthfulness at the core of his book.

There are two pervasive desires

in this book. One is the desire forthe true and accurate representa-tion of modern day Athens. Theother is the desire for a pure andunadulterated beauty in Athens, autopia that would have made theharshness of the author’s childhoodmore bearable. But that’s not whatAthens is. Athens, just like any oth-er big and old city, is a conglomer-ate of events, experiences, terrains,people, desires, specters of the ur-bane. There is nothing exceptionalin Athens; it’s a city that has beautyand ugliness, wealth and poverty,truth and lies, joy and sorrow, cru-elty and tenderness. Just like thehumanity that inhabits it. After all,as Kevin Andrews told us so manyyears ago, “If it’s beauty you wantgo to Italy, go to the Cotswolds, goto a museum; don’t come to Athenswhere something else might hap-pen.” So, should you read thisbook? Absolutely. Should you trustit? Only at your own risk.

Neni Panourgiά is associate pro-fessor of anthropology at Colum-bia University. Her book, “Frag-ments of Death, Fables of Identi-ty: an Athenian Anthropography”(University of Wisconsin Press)received the Grand Jury Prize ofthe International Society for Eth-nohistory (1996) and was a co-winner of the Chicago FolklorePrize (1997). Her new book,“Dangerous Citizens: The Fleshof Dissidence and the Terror ofthe State,” is forthcoming (Fall2008).

MARTIN BRADING

George Sarrinikolaou, born in Athens in 1970, came to New Yorkwith his family at the age of ten. He was educated at Cornell and Co-lumbia and worked as a journalist before turning to enviromentalpolicy.

The Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center of Chicago is proud to announce the creation of aHelllenic Writers Guild which will showcase authors and their works from all over the nation.Under the umbrella of the museum, the guild will allow for; promotion of authors and their works,archiving of their books and body of works in our library, opportunity to sell volumes in HMCC giftshop, allow works to be entered into competitions, offer space for book signings at the HMCC andmany other things.

To this end, the Hellenic Museum and Cultural Center asks that all Greek American authorssubmit their names, address, e-mail address, phone number and bibliography list of their worksto the attention of Nick Vern, Hellenic Writers Guild Chairman,801 W. Adams (4th Floor), Chicago, Illinois 60657.

Authors may also submit this information via email at [email protected].


By Steve FrangosSpecial to The National Herald

Dan Georgakas’ long-awaited bi-ography “My Detroit: Growing UpGreek and American in Motor City”offers more than was expected (NewYork: Pella, 2006). I say long awaitedbecause this memoir is a reworkingof a nearly two-year serial of bio-graphic vignettes that appeared fromlate 1988 well into 1989, in the nowdefunct newspaper, GreekAmerican.Readers with a familiarity with thisseries will be both surprised and per-haps more than a bit confused bywhat has transpired in the nearly 15years of ongoing reflection and con-siderable rewriting. In this time ofunprecedented change within theGreek American community, Geor-gakas has forged a thoughtful narra-tive any Greek in the United Stateswill be served well to closely consid-er.

Georgakas offers a multiple-world perspective. What did Greeksdo or how did they act is always of-fered in counterpoint to how did oth-ers in Detroit respond to the worldaround them. Georgakas escapes anyGreek-Other duality. All his recollec-tions note the sharp demarcationsexisting among the innumerable eth-nic groups and social classes thatmade up the Detroit in which hegrew up.

The book is divided into 12 chap-

ters. Rather than beginning with hisbirth, Georgakas opens with his firstvisit to Greece. Then he traces his lifein Detroit, inner woven with storiesabout his parents, papou and theother Greeks of his youth. Yet at alltimes Georgakas never examines orconsiders any Greek; himself, thosein Greece or the Detroit Greeks out-side of their wider social contexts.

Dan Georgakas is a leading intel-lectual figure in Greek Americanstudies and an exremely well-recog-nized labor historian. His volume, aunique contribution, will appeal tothose interested in the history of eth-nic groups in urban America, as wellas those interested in the cultural,economic and class transformationsevident in Detroit from roughly the1940s into the 1970s.

In the last three chapters of hismemoir, Georgakas offers a sweep-ing presentation of persons and his-torical events. The notable and theunknown cross these pages at a piv-otal moment in the history of Detroit.As both an American and a GreekAmerican biography, these finalchapters are among the most signifi-cant in this entire volume. Let mestress Georgakas never leaves youguessing who some one is in thismemoir. Soon to be internationallyfamous writers are next to long-lostfriends. Yet it is with these final chap-ters that Georgakas turns his primefocus away from Greek America toone directed towards broader politi-cal, social and artistic issues center-ing on Detroit and America at large.Georgakas does deftly fold many ofthese non-Greek issues back onto theconcerns and thoughts of his fellowHellenes, but the focal point has defi-nitely been turned.

With all that being said, I seeGeorgakas’ memoir as the means tohelp us in our growing understand-ing of the inherent complexities ofGreek American memoir.

Greek American Memoir fallswithin three distinct periods. Thefirst encompasses those Greeks whocame to the United States as refugeesand orphans between 1821 and1829. Among these volumes are C.Plato Castanis’, “The Greek Exile”(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1851),“Photius Fisk: A Biography” creditedsolely to Lyman F. Hodge but clearlyco-authored by Fisk (Boston: 1891),and George M. Colvocoresses’, “Hoisphages tou 1822 kai he zoemou/The Massacres of Chios-1822:A Personal Narrative written for myFamily” (Athena: Ekdose Philo-proodou Homilou Kampou, 1992).As I have written in the past, theseaccounts are offered as straight for-ward autobiographies/biographies

unquestionably intended for aProtestant American readership.Without going into greater detailthese accounts largely follow aboli-tionist/slave narratives of this peri-od.

The Second Period of GreekAmerican Memoir corresponds tothe 1880 to 1920 era of Greek immi-grants. The Second Period does haveits own host of recognizable genresubsets: “my experiences as an immi-grant,” “my life in America as aGreek abroad (clearly offered in op-position to someone actually pre-senting themselves as simultaneous-ly a Greek and an American),” “myexperiences growing up the child ofimmigrants.”

Given what follows, I must stresshere that at all times these accountsare offered as real world events in anacceptable Western literary point ofview. No conventions or genre motifsare violated by either the First or Sec-ond group of Greek American mem-oirs. Each writer, in both groups, at-tests that the account is as true toevents as they can reproduce. Mostoften, but not at all times, the se-quence of events is offered in achronological fashion from birth todeath. If the writer is a person of his-torical prominence then the eventsoffered in the narrative may coverspecific aspects of their life or career,rather than a complete retelling ofeverything in their lives.

The Third Period of Greek Ameri-can Memoirs begins in the 1980s andoffers a revolution in presentation.This period does in point of fact con-

tain volumes that absolutely adhereto the accepted norms of Western bi-ography. Fine examples of this genrewould include but are not limited to“Greek American Pioneer Women ofIllinois,” Elaine Thomopoulos, editor(Charleston: Arcadia, 2000), “Grow-ing Up Greek in St. Louis” byAphrodite Matsakis (Chicago: Arca-dia, 2002) and Connie Kiosse’s “TheBest of Friends Two Sisters, OneJourney” (Haverfield PA: InfinityPublishing .com, 2003).

What distinguishes this periodfrom all others is an ever expandingsub-group of accounts that complete-ly ignore the accepted presentationof a Western memoir. With ever

Dan Georgakas, author of "MyDetroit," is the director of theGreek American Studies Projectat Queens College and a NewYork University professor.

Xenophon Georgakas and Demetrius Demos, boyhood friends fromSidirokastro, a village in the Peloponnesus near Kyparissia, areshown shortly after their arrival in Detroit in the mid-1910s. Dan Georgakas and his mother on their front porch in Detroit: 1964.

Dan Georgakas’ Memoir Gives Us a BetterUnderstanding of the World

“My Detroit: GrowingUp Greek andAmerican in MotorCity”By Dan Georgakas

Pella Publishing, 312 pages, $17paperback


growing numbers we see memoirssuch as “Aimilia-Georgios/Emily-George” by Helen Papanikolas (SaltLake City: University of Utah Press,1983), Nicholas Gage’s “Eleni” (NewYork: Random House, 1983), or“Austin Lunch: Greek American Rec-ollections” by Constance M. Constant(River Vale, Cosmos, 2005) which allcompletely veer away from the ac-cepted genre format of Westernmemoirs.

The above authors (as well as theothers in this broad grouping) blurone person with another by first of-fering their own thoughts and thenjumping into another person’s mindand offering that second person’sthoughts. Many of these collective bi-ographies open with the statement ofcollective authorship with then noindication of when one or another ofthe co-authors is speaking. Manypresent dialogue that the authorfreely admits they never heard. Andregrettably more than a few largelyignore any kind of story develop-ment (as pacing, or in a well-bal-anced beginning, middle and endstory format) by stuffing the narra-tive with information about a widearray of people largely peripheral tothe central story. All of this occurswith the overall effect that from aWestern point of view they are nolonger writing a ‘factual’ biographi-cal account of any sort but one that isfantasy at best.

The common core of these newGreek American biographies is theconflation or compression of variouspersonas into a single voice. I take iton faith that any and all the writers,living or dead could and still can dis-tinguish between themselves andothers. That these Greek Americanwriters, each and every one,knew/know Western conventions

concerning memoirs. That each ofthese writers could/can tell fact fromfiction. So, logically if all that is thecase why violate these conventions?Why leave yourself open to this kindof criticism?

Readership can be the only an-swer.

If “Emily and George,” “Eleni,” or“Austin Lunch” or any of the otherGreek American memoirs that as-sume this collectivist persona stoodalone, they would be an aberration.Yet a group of writers totally uncon-nected to each other have indepen-dently chosen the same multi-per-sona presentation. Logically then,given their common choice of a col-lective-voice, all I can assume is thatthey are all independently drawingupon some organic commonly heldGreek American collective under-standing. Since this choice is so clear-ly in open opposition to the domi-nant culture’s concept of what con-stitutes an autobiography/biogra-phy/memoir, then these GreekAmerican writers are not writing toplease or even engage Anglo-Saxons.

I do not believe any Greek Ameri-cans are carefully seeking out earlierGreek American writers to learnabout a commonly shared past. I donot believe there is a self-consciousshared Greek American voice that islearned from reading. That is whatmakes this explosion of multi-per-sona accounts so exciting to discover.These authors are drawing on sharedcultural mode of expression that is inno sense literate.

“My Detroit” and these collectivistmemoirs intersect at one crucialpoint: the rejection of a single cultur-al point of view as being inherentlysuperior over all others. Castanis,Fisk and Colvocoresses were con-fined not simply by the genre re-

quirements of the Western memoir,they also faced the then indisputablesupposition of the natural superiorityof American over Greek culture andsociety. This common “separate butequal” stance is not the same posi-tion. But it does speak to a shareddiscomfort and rejection of acceptedmemoir conventions.

For Georgakas’ non-Greek read-ers the last few chapters of “My De-troit” may prove far more interestingthan all the rest. This has to do withwho Dan Georgakas became afterthe events described in this volumeend. Dan Georgakas is of that groupof scholars who have gained intellec-tual renown before they turned or re-turned their intellectual attention totheir Greek heritage. Academics andIntellectual Others such as TheodoreSaloutos, Helen Papanikolas, An-drew T. Kopan, Alexander Karanikas,Charles Moskos, Alice Scourby andEva Catafygiotu Topping all gainedtheir livelihoods and whateverprominence they initially achieved insome field other than Greek Ameri-can Studies.

Figures such as Kopan orKaranikas were so prominent in theGreek American community thatmany will say I am totally misrepre-senting their lives. But let us not for-get that while Kopan and Karanikaswere unquestionably dynamic GreekAmerican civic leaders, in their pro-fessional careers they were requiredby the academic system they enteredto address other requirements firstand only afterwards work within thesystem to change it to their ownends.

It is interesting to note here is thatthose who take the collectivist view-point are not academics. It is my be-lief that these writers are drawingupon the Greek concept of “dikos”which roughly translated means, insocial terms, as “those family andfriends with whom I am a part.” Thiscan explain the conflation of identity,the inclusion of so many individualsin many of these accounts and theannouncement that the narrativespeaker is more than one person.

In “My Detroit: Growing UpGreek and American in Motor City,”Georgakas offers a multiple-perspec-tive, where more can be learned bysituationally “seeing” the world as aGreek, American, or Other than anyone viewpoint taken alone. Geor-gakas extends and so refines this in-terpretative perspective by demon-strating that fundamental economicand social class considerations cannever be ignored. I believe Geor-gakas’ biography, among its manyother accomplishments, can serve asan intellectual bridge to those au-thors engaged in the multi-personaperspective.

Inherently each perspective rec-ognizes the social chorus all aroundus. Georgakas places people in vari-ous groupings that, depending on

the situation under examination,highlight their similarities and differ-ences under varying conditions. Thecollectivist voice, on the other hand,fuses persons and perspectives in aclaim to be many individuals speak-ing as one. To be sure, it is a criticaldifference that cannot be ignored.There is a Greek folk saying, “Onehand washes the other and bothwash the face.” It is in that spirit thatwe can see Georgakas’ biographyand the collectivists as offering in-sight into each other without deny-ing them their own individual per-spectives and considerable individ-ual achievements.

As any reader of the especiallyfine “My Detroit” will quickly discov-er, the author gives us a better under-standing of the world around us.This has always been at the veryheart of that ardent Hellene and trueAmerican, Dan Georgakas. We onceagain find ourselves in his intellectu-al debt.

Steve Frangos, a regular contribu-tor to The National Herald, travelsthroughout the country investigat-ing and gathering historical infor-mation about the Greek Americancommunity. Readers can contacthim at [email protected].

Panayiotes Vlahantones, the “mayor” of Detroit’s Greektown, at aGreektown grocery in 1976. Five ladies and three generations. Bottom right: Katina Ziguris; Back

right: Sophia Georgakas with the Vlahos family: daughter, mother,grandmothers in 1955. All but the Vlahos daughter were born in AsiaMinor.

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By Dan GeorgakasSpecial to The National Herald

The publication of “The Pass-port and other Selected Short Sto-ries” is a testimony to the renewedvigor of Greek American literarypresses. These publishers alwayshave been priceless community re-sources, but in the past few years,both the number of works beingtranslated from the original Greekand the quality of that work has in-creased markedly. Much of thispublishing activity has been in thefield of poetry as Greece is rightlyheralded as a nation that has pro-duced great contemporary poetssuch as Noble Laureats George Se-feris and Odysseus Elytis and inter-national literary legends such as C.P. Cavafy. For most of the twentiethcentury, in fact, poetry books haveoutsold fiction in Greece, a distinc-tion shared with Wales and Ice-land.

The effort given to promotingGreek poetic achievement has of-ten resulted in a lack of attentiongiven to Greek-language novelistsand short story writers. Nikos Kan-zantzakis is the major exception.Even the general public knows ofhim as the author of “Zorba theGreek.” But most Americans, evenmost Greek Americans, would besurprised to know that AntonisSamarakis (1919-2003) is just ashighly regarded by the internation-

al literary public. Samarakis hasbeen translated into no less than33 different languages. Althoughsome of his stories have been avail-able in English-language maga-zines, a new collection of his shortfiction has been long overdue. “ThePassport and Other Selected ShortStories” answers that need andstrives to bring a notable Greek au-thor to the attention of a broadAmerican public.

The eight stories that have beenanthologized and translated by An-drew Horton are vintage Sama-rakis. Each story focuses on a sin-gle character who is bedeviled byone or another aspect of contem-porary society. The problem ofteninvolves the maddening ways of anerrant political or social system.Just as often, however, the prob-lem stems from within an individ-ual who is confounded by his orher inability to deal with the stress-es and anxieties of the modernworld. However complex the polit-ical or emotional problems beingaddressed, the writing is alwayscrisp and direct. Samarakis writesin the economical tradition of aHemingway rather than in therambling style of a Faulkner.

Horton, who is a screenwriterand has written extensively on howto write character-centered scripts,believes Samarakis’ spare writingstyle can be described as a kind ofcinematic realism. By that, hemeans that a Samarakis short story,like a film, mainly explores the ex-terior surfaces of the physicalworld and how the protagonistconfronts those surfaces. Most ofthe psychological drama unfolds indialog rather than internal medita-tions. The characters speak aloud,even when speaking with them-selves. Repeated references to thetime or day nail down the physicalsetting, but the descriptions are on-ly detailed enough to spur readersto use their own imaginations tocomplete the scene.

Horton is not alone in appreci-ating the cinematic aspects ofSamarakis’ fiction. In 1960, NikosKoundouras transformed theSamarakis short story “The River”into a film with mixed English andGreek dialog. “The River” won anumber of prizes and has beenscreened in the United States as“This Side of the River.” Anotherstory, “The Jungle,” was one of fourstories in an anthology film titled“Tetragono” (The Rectangle.1977). Sections of his most fa-mous novel, “The Flow” were thebasis for a Japanese television dra-ma and several stories have beenused for dramas presented onGreek and Canadian television.

These productions not only under-score the cinematic qualities of hiswriting but their universality. In1970 he was presented with a ma-jor literary award in France, cap-ping a decade in which he had wona number of literary honors inGreece.

THE STORIES“The Passport,” the story that

gives the anthology its name, waspublished in 1973, the final year ofthe rule of the junta. The storydeals with an accountant fightingthe police bureaucracy to get apassport, a situation that mirroredSamarakis’ own real-life plight.Rather than seeking safety abroadwhen the junta seized power in1967, Samarakis had opted to re-main in Greece. He thought thathis literary fame offered enoughprotection for him to be able to ar-gue for change from within the na-tional borders, and he often gaveinterviews to the foreign press inwhich he criticized the regime.Mainly, however, he wrote fictionthat mocked the oppressive statebureaucracy. Four of those stories(“The Passport,” “Mama,” “TheKnife,” and “The Last Participa-tion”) are in this collection. In1970, the junta rewarded his ef-forts by seizing his passport. At var-ious points in the struggle, the se-cret police told him that their ha-rassment would cease, and he

would get a passport if he wouldonly write a few kind words aboutthe colonels.

Rather than give in to the jun-ta’s demands, Samarakis wrotemore plainly than ever beforeabout the dictatorship in “The Pass-port.” The story’s power, as is oftenthe case with Samarakis, is that itisn’t a complaint about a specificregime in a specific time and place.The nation in which the eventstranspire is not identified asGreece. Instead, the story exam-ines the responses of an ordinaryman when confronted with themaddening and coercive machin-ery of an anonymous, oppressivestate. Language becomes an issuein that struggle. The honest citizen,much like the philosopher seekingwisdom, uses language as a meansto clarify thought. The state, incontrast, is like a sophist who useslanguage as a means of manipula-tion. The objective of the state is towin the argument at hand, often atthe cost of abandoning logic, objec-tive data, and matters of principles.“The Passport” and other stories es-pousing democracy that he wrotein this period endeared Samarakisto a Greek public sickened by dicta-torship. Given that 2007 will markthe fortieth anniversary of thecoup, this anthology reminds us ofhow positively Greece has evolvedsince the fall of the dictatorship.

At a presentation of the anthol-

ogy at the Greek Press Office inNew York, Horton read “Mama.”The story begins with a womanlearning that the tunnel in whichher son works has collapsed, killingmany workers. She goes to thescene, and we follow her as shestruggles to find out the particularsof the accident and whether herson is among the survivors. Thestory has a powerful ending thatbrought tears to the eyes of someof the audience in New York. Thepower of that ending lies in the un-expected manner in which Sama-rakis transforms the mother’s re-sponses into emotions that go be-yond the strictly personal and fa-milial. When I asked Horton if hethought this was the best story inthe collection, he said not neces-sarily so, but that it illustrated the“emotional punch” so characteris-tic of Samarakis.

The startling ending of “Mama”is a quality shared with other sto-ries in the collection. In one ofthem, the narrator, who has en-gaged us in a complex tale, turnsout to be dead. He has been speak-ing at his own burial ceremony. Weonly discover this at the end, butthis is not just “a trick;” a widerpoint is being made about the per-spective with which we viewevents. Some critics have com-pared these techniques to FranzKafka, but Samarakis is far morehopeful than Kafka at his most op-

Greece's General Consulate in New York and the Hellenic Literature Society hosted a celebration of Greekauthor, Antonis Samarakis, on February 16, 2007 at the Greek Press and Communication Office. Sama-rakis' book, "The Passport and Other Short Stories," translated by Andrew Horton, was presented. Fromleft to right are Catherine Boura, Consul General of Greece in New York, Andrew Horton and EleniSamarakis, widow of Antonis Samarakis.

A Greek Voice for our Times

“The Passport andother Selected ShortStories”By Antonis Samarakis (Translated by Andrew Horton)

Cosmos Publishing, 110 pages,$16.95, paperback

TNH/COSTAS BEJ


timistic and much funnier. In termsof the dead man talking, ratherthan Kafka, I was reminded of thefloating body of William Holdenwho is the voiceover in the filmclassic “Sunset Boulevard.” A ro-mantic rendezvous and related as-pirations in other stories also endup in unexpected terrain.

In some stories, the charactersspeak directly to the reader in thefirst person. In others, dialog car-ries the story line forward. Whatev-er the narrative strategy, Samarakisalways uses colloquial languagethat is stripped of literary allusionsand other formalities. The original

Greek was largely in the demotikirather than katharevousa, but al-ways in the manner Greeks actual-ly speak with one another. Hortonhas done yeoman’s work in findingAmerican equivalents that catchthe populist nature, comedy andfeeling of the original Greek whileretaining the sense that this story isnot unfolding in the United States.

A MOVEMENT OF THE SOULSamarakis famously observed

that he wondered if Greece, in theprocess of giving off so much cul-tural light to the world, what hecalled “the lights of civilization,”had forgotten to keep one for itself.His perspective is not that of anelitist but of a fervent democrat.He was concerned that culture inGreece had been debased. When aprofessor at a university describedhimself as a civil servant, Sama-rakis was outraged. He thoughtprofessors should be tribunes ofculture, and that is not the job de-scription for civil servants. One ofthe stories in this collection,“Anatomy Lesson, Etc.” features aprofessor who begins very much inthe civil servant mode but becomesthe tribune his students had mis-takenly thought he was all along.In that story, as in others, Sama-rakis expresses great faith in theability of youth to inspire couragein others and to renew the nationalculture.

How citizens, particularly edu-cated citizens, could tolerate a jun-ta bewildered Samarakis. Hethought no cultured person couldaccept such “stupidity” and “sup-pression.” What individuals mightscore on an academic exam andhow many books they might haveread or even written was meaning-less if they abided tyranny silently.His anger was not a matter of ide-ology so much as one of spirit. Andmuch as Samarakis detested thejunta, he did not think the colonelswere alien mutations. He consid-ered them fruit of a rotten cultural

tree, which meant that much inGreek culture needed to be recti-fied. But the political views ofSamarakis are not easily catego-rized. During World War II, he hadbeen in the Resistance against theNazis, had been captured and thenhad escaped. He did not, however,have allegiance to any particularparty. He said he belonged to “themovement of the soul.” Althoughsomething of a generic anarchistwho distrusted all governmentsand honored the potential of theaverage citizen, he thought it waswrong to ban any political party,including the Communists. In aninterview given in 1965, he saidthat the intellectuality and spiritu-ality of the common man was on amuch higher plane than that of theking, church leaders, politicians,university professors and writers.He traced the worst aspects ofmodern Greek culture back to theestablishment by outside forces ofa foreign sovereign surrounded bywealthy homeland and foreignsupporters. He posited that the stu-dents who had revolted at the Poly-technic in 1973 had laid the foun-dations for a better Greece.

Samarkis didn’t like to be calleda writer or author. He said he didnot want to be a slave to his or any-one else’s notion of “art.” He didnot think it necessary to write everyday. He would write only when hehad an idea or situation worthy ofexploration. From time to time, hestarted with a conclusion andsearched for a premise. Whatever

the genesis for his writing, he want-ed his work to be infused with thesame creative and playful spirit hehad felt as a child of ten when hebegan to write poetry. His fictionwriting had begun in the late 1940swhen he had explored story ideasand themes with friends at a fa-vorite taverna in Athens. Hisfriends had urged him to write outhis tales on paper so the storiescould be more easily shared. He didso and published them in 1953 un-der the title “White Hope.” As oftenis the case in Greece he paid for thepublication himself and personallytook it around to bookstores. When

a critic at To Vima reviewed it fa-vorably, he began to reach a widerange of readers. His work wouldflow in numerous directions, win-ning plaudits from both the publicand critics, at home and abroad.Among his American fans was play-wright Arthur Miller who thoughthis novel “The Flow” was memo-rable for its profound understand-ing of the meaning of democracy.Novelist Graham Greene thoughtthe novel was a masterpiece ofimagination, wit and technical skill.In 1982, Samarakis would be hon-ored by Europhalia for his overallcontribution to literature.

For some years before his death,Samarakis had hoped to see hisjunta-era stories collected and hadworked with Andrew Horton tothat end. Cosmos Publishing mustbe commended for publishing thestories as part of its Modern GreekLiterary Library series. “The Pass-port and Other Selected Stories”anthology exemplifies one of themany ways that the Greek Ameri-can community and its allies con-tinue to support contemporaryGreek culture. Samarakis embod-ies some of the best values in Hel-lenism as he speaks brilliantly andpersuasively for what Horton terms“the inner territories of freedomand moral dignity.”

Dan Georgakas, author of "MyDetroit," is the director of theGreek American Studies Projectat Queens College and a NewYork University professor.

Antonis Samarakis (1919-2003),one of modern Greece's mosttranslated fiction writers, wasthe author of two novels andfour short story collections.

www.greeceinprint.com

Andrew Horton, translator of An-tonis Samarakis' "Passport andOther Selected Short Stories," ishead of the film department atthe University of Oklahoma andthe author of two books on TheoAngelopoulos.

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THE GRECIAN PLATE


By Steve FrangosSpecial to The National Herald

“Growing up Greek in St. Louis”by Aphrodite Matsakis is yet anotherof the collective biographies stream-ing out of Greek America on nearly adaily basis. It is a finely written andwell-conceived account that deservesthe widest audience possible. Where“Growing Up Greek” differs from theother, now almost 100 accounts writ-ten since 1980, is in its unwaveringclarity. Aphrodite Matsakis’ narrativedemonstrates that no outside expertis really ever really necessary. Anythoughtful individual, from anygroup, can speak of their experiencewithout the benefit of an outsider in-terpreter.

In contemporary American andGreek societies the expert is king.This says more about the heavy so-cial conditioning in both these soci-eties than it does anything inherentlyfundamentally special about a spe-cialist.

I am so impressed by “Growingup Greek in St. Louis” because it is inthe tradition of work by Helen ZeesePapanikolas and Eva Catafygiotu

Topping, Efthalia Makris Walsh andothers. Direct simply prose can de-scribe and explain any social situa-tion. Matsakis is forthright about thisaccount being based solely on hersubjective experience:

“When I first shared this manu-script with relatives, some of themcommented, “That never happened!”or “It happened, but not like yousay!” Not only do they disagree withme, but with each other. Alas, truthis elusive. Even people growing up inthe same family can have vastly dif-ferent experiences.

“Undoubtedly some of my memo-ries have been tainted by time andsubsequent events and photos. Withthe exception of my relatives, I havechanged names and other identify-ing details about persons, sometimescombining individuals into a com-posite, for purposes of confidentiali-ty. Except for my family, any resem-blance to individuals, dead or alive,is purely coincidental.

“Yet there are no fabricated sto-ries here. Although certain non-es-sential specifics may have been dif-ferent, the emotional essence has re-mained true. To the best of myknowledge, I’m recording what Isaw, heard, and experienced inside.

“I write as a Greek American whonow, more than ever, values her her-itage and hopes to see it sustain theyounger generations as much as itdid me. But I also write as a woman.If one of my brothers had written thisbook, it would probably be differentin both perspective and tone (11).”

For those of you who have notread any contemporary ethnographyon modern Greece this description ofwho is named or not named, the sub-jective collection of data, and the cre-ation of composite characters to il-

lustrate prevalent social actions areall commonplace narrative devices.These ethnographies are alwaysbased on the written notes of theethnographers. So it is from thiscompilation of diary entries of obser-vations and conversations collectedin the past (themselves based on thememories or explanations of others)on which the ethnographic “present”is quite consciously composed.

Since we have no contemporaryuniversity based sociologist, anthro-pologist, folklorist or even historianresearching and writing about GreekAmerican society and culture we areindeed fortunate that talented indi-viduals such as Aphrodite Matsakishave taken the trouble to research,

think about and write such works ofreal and lasting significance.

Matsakis has set herself the taskof writing of her experiences grow-ing up Greek. The book therefore isnot a historical account of all thingsGreek in St. Louis. Still by taking thisvery self-consciously personal ap-proach the author has in fact provid-ed us a much fuller sense of daily lifefrom the late 1940s until the presentthan the average historical account.

“Growing up Greek in St. Louis,”like other volumes by Arcadia Pub-lishing’s Voice of America series, is128 pages long, with 10 chaptersand some 112 historical black andwhite photographs. The photographsare vital to this account’s narrative.We not only see the individuals men-tioned but we also “see” physiologi-cal and social similarities to otherGreek American communitiesaround the country. Very often thiscarefully selection of photographs(and their captions) not only illus-trate the narrative but frequently ex-tends the story over time.

The sequence of chapters reportson this commonality. Chapter One,“From Karpathos to St. Louis,” out-lines the passage to America by theauthor’s immigrant ancestors. InChapter Two, “Shake, Rattle, andRoll,” among the author’s very firstmemories is the Greek propensity forsocial gatherings, which invariablyinclude song and dance. ChapterThree, “The Double House: theGreek Side and the American Side,”speaks of how the actual layout ofthe author’s home compartmental-ized her two identities. In ChapterFour, “The Greek School Blues,” themixed response every child feels for

The New “Historia” of St. Louis Greeks

“Growing Up Greekin St. Louis”By Aphrodite Matsakis

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In 1915 Tsichlis and Rallis Grocery Store located at 6th and Elm, thecurrent location of Busch Stadium, was part of St. Louis’s early Greektown. When Peter Tsichlis came to St. Louis in 1904, he worked as agandy dancer (one who laid railroad tracts) until he saved enoughmoney to open the store with Andrew Rallis in 1907. They sold Greekimports, meat and other items. A butchery was located in the back. In1915 Rallis and his family returned to Greece to live.

After the author’s Yiayia Aphrodite died in 1954, the women in herimmediate and extended family wore black for many years. Nobodyforced them to: they did so willingly to express their sorrow. Picturedin black from left to right (front row) are Sophia Gorman; (standing),Theodora Anagnos, Maria Caputo and Theodora Matsakis. The be-reaved husband, Elias Papageorge, seated in the front row, is wear-ing the traditional black mourning tie. For years after his wife?sdeath, he sat before her picture and sang love songs to her on hismandolin. Seated to his right are his three grandchildren. Being chil-dren, they were exempt from wearing mourning clothes.


attending afternoon school is exam-ined at length. Chapter Five de-scribes “An Old Fashion GreekChristmas; Chapter Six, “ ‘Give MeLiberty or Give Me Death’ recalls allthose Greek school programs Mat-sakis and her cohorts were made toparticipate in. In Chapter Seven,“The Grandmothers in Black,” theauthor first describes the immigrantgeneration of women and then notesthe transformations in successivegenerations. Chapter Eight, “GoodBye Sweet Dreams,” is an especiallythoughtful account of the author’sgrandmother’s life of sacrifice. Chap-ter 9, “To Fast Not To Fast,” examinesthe complexities of “how Greek orhow American to be?” Finally, Chap-ter 10, “How I Got to Go to College,”explores not only the author’s effortsto receive an education but how pre-vious generations of women in herfamily were denied or successfullyfought for education.

I can without reservation recom-mend this book to anyone whowants to read a concise, thoughtfulnarrative of Greek American life.These are the kinds of book onewould hope would be used in theclassroom or recommended byfriends.

In that regard there does seem tobe a fundamental problem. Fromconversations I have had with vari-ous authors and company represen-tatives Arcadia Publishing Companyis having difficulty selling their GreekAmerican volumes outside their geo-graphic areas of focus. I was especial-ly surprised when Arcadia editors aswell as individual Greek Americansauthors asked me during our conver-sations if I knew of any way to im-prove their sells. As I told these indi-viduals, I see this dilemma as an ex-pression of the Greek tendency evenhere in North America to only careabout those Greek individuals theyknow personally. This ‘city state’mentality has deep roots in our com-munity's self-view and so socialstructure.

We can see this orientation in thecontents of the nearly 100-biographi-

cal/collective historical volumesGreek Americans have producedsince 1980. In the original Greek,“historia” simultaneously means ‘his-tory’ and ‘story.’ Uninfluenced by anyprofessional class these Greek Ameri-can writers have been expressingtheir collective sense of self withouthaving to get approval from anyone.The “proof” that Greek Americanshave a common cultural and histori-cal experience can be seen not sim-ply by virtue of the similarity ofthemes and conclusions seen in thesebooks.

The very ‘voice’ that we hear is acollective, familial and squarelybased on a Greek community basis.Throughout this volume Matsakiscuts to the core issue: “The extendedfamily, including those still inGreece, not the nuclear family, wasthe rule of the day (21).” The St.Louis community Matsakis so clearlydescribes was her “village” of every-day experience as it is for all GreekAmericans no matter where theylive.

Matsakis unfortunately begins thevolume’s first sentence with a minorpoint of Greek American history thatis inaccurate: “Although someGreeks claim that ChristopherColumbus was Greek, the first bonafide Greeks came to the U.S. in theearly 1800s (Moskos 1990).”

In 1768, the New Smyrna Colonyof some 1,200 colonists, with morethan half this contingent being eth-nic Greeks, was established in east-ern Florida. The Saint Photios Na-tional Greek Orthodox Shrine in St.Augustine, Florida honors the mem-ory of this migration to the NewWorld.

Aphrodite Matsakis writes with-out fail or pause when it comes to St.Louis or Karpathos. It is only withthose less than a handful of refer-ences to Greeks outside that world-view where she has momentarilymisstepped. This is absolutely theonly flaw I discovered in this other-wise exceptional account.

Aphrodite Matsakis and I arefrom the same generation. TheGreek American society she de-scribes is the mirror image of the oneI grew up in. It will be by readingbooks such as “Growing up Greek inSt. Louis” that future researchers, bethey born in Greece or otherwise,will come to a better and clearer un-derstanding of the origins and socialworld that now constitutes GreekAmerica.

Steve Frangos, a regular contribu-tor of The National Herald, is afreelance writer who travelsthroughout the country investigat-ing and gathering historical infor-mation about the Greek Americancommunity. Readers interested incontacting him are encouraged toe-mail him [email protected].

Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D.vincecowan.com


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Documents

The National Herald - Amazon S3 · grants in the Southern United States, 1895-1965” by Larry Odzak; and "Remembering Newark's Greeks: An American Odyssey” by Angelique Lambros