a) Fiction
Ahnen, Pearl Kastran. Daughter of Immigrants. Baltimore: Publish America, 2003.
Burzawa, Paula Renee. Seasons of the Sun. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, Inc., 2010.
As described on the back cover of the book: Question: Will there be a problem re: copyright if we quote? “When a shy American teenager travels with her mother to the mountain village of Vassara, Greece, after the unexpected death of a family member, she is overcome with grief. As she watches children chase balls across the town square and old widows ride atop donkeys to harvest fields of almond and olive trees, the young girl realizes she has stumbled upon a gateway to a new life. What starts out as a holiday abroad quickly turns into the discovery of a magical place, where love and friendship endure through time and where traditions of an ancient world survive modern change to bring about an inexplicable miracle. Summer after summer, she cannot resist returning to her mother’s homeland and the enchanting village that enraptures both her heart and soul. Nothing—not even a raging mountain wildfire—can keep her away from the people and place she loves. As she matures from a girl to a woman, she falls in love for the first time and faces a difficult choice between the familiarity of home and the enticement of an uncertain future.
Davidson, Catherine Temma. The Priest Fainted. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
The novel is informed by the personal experience of the author, a third-generation Greek American. The narrator journeys to Greece, the birthplace of her grandmother, in passionate pursuit of her mother’s and grandmother’s pasts. In the process she discovers insights about herself and her own identity.
Doulis, Thomas. City of Brotherly Love: Philadelphia, 1945-1968. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2008.
The second and third generations of the Greek family (the Stratons) as they encounter the politically and racially changed years of post World War Two Philadelphia.
Doulis, Thomas. The Open Hearth: The First Generation, A Novel of Immigration. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2000.
The first generation of a Greek family (the Stratons) as they confront the ethnic confusion and privations of the steel industry and unionism in Western Pennsylvania.
Doulis, Thomas. Path for our Valor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Gus Damianos, one of three protagonists in the pre-Kennedy Special Forces on military maneuvers.
Doulis, Thomas. The Quarries of Sicily. New York: Crown, 1969.
An American translator of an elderly Greek writer during the years of the military Junta as he translates a short novel that is a warning to the United States about its adventure in Vietnam.
Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Jameson, Harris P. For Sully’s Sake. Authorhouse, 2000.
For Sully’s Sake is about the life of a Greek American newspaper reporter, Homer Janos, who grew up in the tough Mission Hill section of Boston.
Jarvis, Charles E. The Tyrants. Lowell: Ithaca Press, 1977.
Jarvis, Charles E. Zeus has Two Urns. Lowell: Ithaca Press, 1976.
Jenkins, Suzanne. The Greeks of Beaubien Street. North Charleston: CreateSpace, Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Καρατζαφέρη, Ιωάννα. Βιο-ιστορίες. Διηγήματα. Αθήνα: Καστανιώτης, 2007.
Kogan, Rick. A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, A Curse, and the American Dream. Lake Claremont Press, 2006.
Rick Kogan, a journalist and writer, describes the colorful life of Greek immigrant William “Billy Goat” Sianis and his popular Billy Goat Tavern, a hang-out for newspaper men, policemen and politicians. Sianis was not allowed to bring his pet goat to the World Series in 1945, which the Cubs lost. From that day, a popular legend was born: the Cubs could not win a World Series because of Sianis’s curse. Photos are included.
Kokonis, Nicholas. Arcadia, My Arcadia. Deerfield, IL: St. Basil’s Publishers, 2004.
Kokonis, Nicholas. Out of Arcadia: the American Odyssey of Angelo Vlahos. Deerfield, IL: St. Basil’s Publishers, 2011.
This novel features a young man from a poor farm village who immigrates to the United States to reunite with his childhood sweetheart, to get a college education, and to help support his family in Greece. Although the book is fiction, some of the author’s own life experiences help inform the story of Angelo and the challenges he faces as an immigrant.
Kolias, Georgia. The Feasting Virgin. Bywater Books, 2020,
Krantz, Robert. Falling in Love with Sophia. Irving, CA: Elinas Multimedia, 2009.
This is a love story between Michael, a Greek American and Sophia, a non-Greek from Tennessee. Michael, despite challenges such as his parents’ divorce, succeeds in holding on to his “culture, family and God.”
Lambrou, Nickos Jean. Odysseus His Americanization. iUniverse, 2002.
The story of a Greek undocumented immigrant’s adventures as he pursues the American dream of becoming rich and famous.
Lardas, Nicholas G. Ikaria Remembered. Illustrations by Zacharias A. Lardis. Lardis Fine Arts.
In 1932 Nicholas Lardas, then age 13, traveled with his mother and siblings from Long Island to his parents’ island of Ikaria, while his father stayed in New York to support them. More than 70 years later, Lardas recollected his youthful impressions in this collection of short stories.
Lazaridis Power, Henriette. The Clover House. New York: Random House, 2013.
A compelling fictional portrait that illuminates and contrasts the Greece of today with the country during the troubled era of the early 1940s, under Italian occupation and burgeoning fascism. […] [An] insightful examination of memory and the stories that hold us together — or perhaps tear us apart. […] The Clover House eloquently questions the wisdom of relying too much on memories of the past as a guide for understanding the present.”
Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe.
Liontas, Annie. 2015. Let Me Explain You, New York: Scribner
Mamatas, Nick. The Last Weekend. New York: Night Shade Books/Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.
Greek-American Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolos struggles to break free of his Rust Belt-roots by leaving Ohio for first Boston, and then San Francisco, but is hamstrung by his alcoholism and his failed attempts to become a writer—any hope of success is ruined when the United States is engulfed by a zombie apocalypse. Billy becomes a “driller” for the rump government of San Francisco while continuing to take notes for his Bukowskiesque memoirs, and following the lead of his paranoid girlfriend Alexa, whose own family was traumatized by the Greek Civil War, determines to find the cause of the dead uprising.
Mavrovitis, Jason. Remember Us. Sonoma, CA: Golden Fleece, 2007.
This fictionalized account of the life of Mavrovitis’s maternal grandparents and their family spans the years from 1886 to 1936. Here is the description on the book jacket: “At a time of sweeping nationalism in the Balkans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the characters in Remember Us survive pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and guerrilla warfare. Escaping war they leave homes and loved ones to forge new lives in America. But in the New World, the immigrants find that they must rely on their culture and enduring family ties in the face of loss of place, poverty, death, and scandal.”
Melis, Amalia. “Immigrant Daughter,” Glimmer Train Journal, (2nd place Short Story Award for New Writers), Spring 2002.
Melis, Amalia. “Daughter News,” Glimmer Train Journal, (Short Story finalist), 2005.
Melis, Amalia. “Broken English,” Glimmer Train Journal, (Short Story finalist), 2007.
Melis, Amalia. “I Know My Place,” Glimmer Train Journal, (Honorable Mention), Dec. 2013.
Melis, Amalia. “A One Minute Dream,” Writers@Work, (Finalist & Honorable Mention), Feb. 2014.
Amalia Melis is a Greek-American journalist and a fiction writer. She is the founder of the Aegean Arts Circle writing workshops (www.aegeanartscircle.com), which host annual creative writing workshops with award winning authors-held in Andros, Greece. An artist as well as writer, her assemblage sculptures have been part of group art exhibits in Vermont U.S., Athens, Greece, Berlin, Germany. Born and raised in New York, she is bilingual.
Pappos, Ioannis. Hotel Living: A Novel. New York: McNally Jackson Books, 2013.
Petrakis, Harry Mark. Cavafy’s Stone and Other Village Tales. Chicago: Wicker Park Press, 2010.
Skaragas, Gianni. “Floaters.” World Literature Today, Vol. 88, No.2 (March/April 2014), 20–23.
“Anna is a self-hating Greek-American psychic working for the German secret service. Her assignment? Travel to crisis-ravaged Greece and save people from suicide.”
Tsalikoglou, Fotini. 8 ώρες και 35 λεπτά: Μια ιστορία. [8 Hours and 35 Minutes: A Story]. Εκδόσεις Καστανιώτη, 2013.
Τρέντελ, Αρίστη. Άρτεμις: Διηγήματα. Μετ. Χριστίνα Λιναρδάκη, Τάσος Αναστασίου. Αθήνα: Ηριδανός, 2008.
Zervanos, Jim. Love Park. Brule, WI: Cable Publishing, 2009.
In his search for identity and manhood, Peter, the son of a Greek Orthodox priest, discovers a secret that can tear his family apart.
b) Fiction Reviews
Bakopoulos, Natalie. 2015. “Let Me Explain You by Annie Liontas,” San Francisco Gate (August 1, 2015).
Rakopoulos, Theodoros. “The Poetics of Diaspora: Greek US Voices.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 34:1 (May 2016): 161-167
Stefanidou, Anastasia. Review of The Open Hearth: The First Generation: A Novel Immigration (Thomas Doulis). Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora. Vol. 26.1-2 (2010).
Thomopoulos, Elaine. Review of Ikaria Remembered (Nicholas G. Lardas). New York: National Herald Books, 2006. 8+.
c) Poetry
Αλεξίου, Νίκος. Κυκλικά Τραύματα. Σ.Ι. Ζαχαρόπουλος, 2011.
Alexiou, Nicholas. Astoria: Exile People Places. Boston: Somerset Hall Press, 2013.
A bilingual collection of poetry in Greek and English about Greeks in America, particularly in the Astoria section of New York.
Anagnostou, Yiorgos. “Poetry Traversing History: Narrating Louis Tikas in David Mason’s Ludlow.” Retelling the Past in Contemporary Greek Literature, Film and Popular Culture, edited by Gerasimus Katsan and Trine Stauning Willert, Lexington Press, 2019, pp. 49-66.
Anagnostou, Yiorgos. “Pale Imitation” and “–Aμέerικa.” Transnational Literature, Vol. 4(1), November 2011. (https://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/current.html)
Andromahi’s 1936 Poetry Journal
Transcribed and translated from Greek by her grandson, John Espinosa, U-M Law School graduate, 2009.
Αναγνώστου, Γιώργος. Λόγοι χ Αμερικής. Ενδυμίων, 2014.
Αναγνώστου, Γιώργος. Διασπορικές διαδρομές. Αθήνα: Απόπειρα, 2012.
Η ποιητική συλλογή Διασπορικές διαδρομές προτείνει μια χαρτογράφηση της σύγχρονης ελληνοαμερικανικής μετανάστευσης. Κεντρικές συντεταγμένες της είναι οι ποικίλοι επαναπροσδιορισμοί του μετανάστη με το «άλλο» και το «αλλού». Πώς το διαφορετικό ορίζεται σε οικείο; Πώς το οικείο διαμορφώνεται σε αποχρώσεις ξένου; Πώς καλλιεργεί κανείς τη συνέχεια σε μια εμπειρία που έχει την ασυνέχεια ως συνθήκη.https://apopeirates.blogspot.com/2012/04/blog-post_20.html
Economou, George. 2015. Unfinished and Uncollected: Finishing and Unfinished Poems of C.P. Cavafy and Uncollected Poems and Translations. Shearsman Books.
Economou, George. Ananios of Kleitor, Poems & Fragments and their Reception from Antiquity to the Present. London: Shearsman Press, 2009.
“With this latest volume of poetry, poet and scholar of Medieval English George Economou exemplifies both how an American of Greek descent may reclaim Greece and simultaneously how impossibly elusive is the goal of recovery. Ananios of Kleitor is an unprecedented, unique work. Part poem, part scholarship, part manuscript history, part correspondence, it translates and reconstructs fragments and the scholarly history of an author and poetic oeuvre that never existed. The book opens with a photo-image of a brown papyrus from the University of Michigan Papyrology Collection, then a brief introduction praising the recovery work of scholars and summarizing the legacy of Ananios’s lost texts. English translations of 41 fragments of Greek erotic verse follow. Ancient commentaries on Ananios poetry give contexts for its readings, and modern correspondence on the poems’ recovery tells a gripping story of classicism intermixed with love, adultery, betrayal, and the atrocities of World War II. The book closes with an index nomenum with biographies of all the players. All of this comes together as a commanding piece of fiction centered in the vicinity of Kalavryta, the patrida of both Ananios and Economou, opening scene of the Greek revolution of 1821, and scene of the execution of 78 German soldiers followed by the machine gunning of 1436 Greek males on December 13, 1943. It turns out that the book’s contents, but not its context, are a stunning deception. The book also invites us to think about the perspective on Greece developed by the child of Greek emigrants. The book represents Economou’s most profound reckoning with the process of reclaiming Greece from the outside. Economou’s encounter with Ananios, like his encounter with Greece, begins with a translation of fragments of a whole that does not exist, and which, even in its fragmentary form, is invented based on evidence passionately preserved by others. The fragments are so shattered, old, and foreign that they make little sense in and of themselves. Yet powerful emotions get attached to them. Like the Greece recounted abroad by one’s emigrating parents, the original poems become an ever-receding target. While there is no possibility of their recovery, the very act of translating fragments that do not exist and recovering their context becomes a way of connecting not just with an emigrant’s origin in an imagined homeland but with Hellenism and the very conditions of its survival.”
Illuminations: An International Magazine of Contemporary Writing 29 (2013).
A special theme issue on Greece, past and present, real and imagined. The volume features poetry, photography, creative nonfiction, works in translation, and vignettes chronicling current life in Greece in the wake of riots and economic sanctions. The issue also looks backward to myth examining the persistence of myth in modern Greek life. Featured writers include Paticia Nelson, Lili Bita, Robert Zaller, Kelly Cherry, Nick Trakakis, James Doyle, Adrienne Kalfopoulou, and many other diasporic writers interested in exploring Greece and Greek heritage.
Kalamaras, George. Your Own Ox-head Mask as Proof. Brooklyn, New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010.
Kalogeris, George. Dialogos: Paired Poems in Translation. Champaign, IL: Antilever, 2013.
Kavounas, Alic. Ornament of Asia. London: Shearsman Press, 2009.
Kalfopoulou, Adrianne. Passion Maps. Pasadena: Red Hen Press, 2009.
Kostos, Dean, ed. Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry. New Jersey: Somerset Hall Press, 2008.
Kindinger, Evangelia. “Living Separation: Xenitia in Contemporary Poetry of the Greek Diaspora.” Recovery and Transgression: Memory in American Poetry. Ed. Cornelia Freitag, 187–207. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Mason, David. Ludlow. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2007.
“Mason’s poetry explores a wide range of subjects, including family, relationships, the outdoors, travel, history, and the American West. Adept in traditional forms, Ludlow uses blank verse to tell the story of the 1914 Ludlow massacre—in which miners and their families were killed by the Colorado National Guard.”
Brighde Mullins, reviewing Ludlow in the Dark Horse, called the book a “cinematic contemplation in poetry” in which Mason examines the lives of real and invented characters, the Colorado terrain, and the immigrant experience.
Mason’s prose includes a memoir about Greece, News from the Village: Aegean Friends (2010), and a collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry (1999). He has co-edited the anthologies of poetry Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (1996), Twentieth Century American Poetry (2004), and Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry (2005), as well as the essay collection Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry (2003)”
Source
Papadopoulos, Stephanos. The Black Sea. Rhinebeck: Sheep Meadow Press, 2012.
The Black Sea explores the historic “great catastrophe” of the Pontic Greeks of Asia Minor in the 1920s through a series of “sonnet-monologues” or voices from the past. Priests, prostitutes, soldiers, and a bizarre cast of characters move through this poetic reimagining of a tragic chapter in Greece’s history. Based on the author’s own family history, as well a fictitious retelling of scenes from the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the poems in this book jump from the tragic to the humorously absurd, and focus on the very human folly of war, suffering and exile. Intrigued by the idea of an “inherited memory of war” and a series of old family photographs, the author set off on a motorcycle trip of the southern Black Sea, exploring the old Greek villages and monasteries of the Pontic Greeks and traveling across the same landscapes still inhabited by the ghosts of Strabo, Xenophon and Alexander the Great.
Rouskas, Basil. Redrawing Borders: Selected Poems. Georgetown: Finishing Line Press, 2010.
Samaras, Nicholas. American Psalm, World Psalm. Ashland, OH: Ashland Poetry Press, 2014.
Tolides, Tryfon. An Almost Pure Empty Walking. Penguin, 2006.
“Tolides’ poems move through the many wrinkles in the lives of immigrants, who encounter the new world through the old and live both here and there. Working long hours in restaurants, a package store and pizza delivery, the immigrant son encounters worlds of hard loneliness. Harder still are images of raw power that cut through his conscience but make no sense to him. America also gives the poet his appreciation for the village, the setting of a more intimate home. Greece is powerfully present in this collection. Regular summer visits keep the place, the people, the trees, soil, air, houses, sparrows, swallows, plants, smoke a continuous memory and presence. The village becomes a jewel that lights up whenever the immigrant son is far away. Everything feels grounded. Things all seem to rest in their proper place. An Almost Pure Empty Walking captures the transatlantic between-ness of the poet’s life: between America and Greece, city and village, complexity and simplicity.”
Tolides, Tryfon, Exclusive Interview with Artemis Leontis (2006)
Tolides, Tryphon. Poems [“Village Time,” “After Vespers (I.M. Esfigmenou),” “First Rain in the Village,” “String Beans,” “After,” “The Last Apple,” “Next to Silence (Kenosis),” “Unexpected Dailiness”]. The Adirondack Review: An Arts & Literature Quarterly, Vol. XII.2 (Fall 2011).
Tolides, Tryfon. Poems [“Aperture,” “Place,” “Stuff I’m Looking For”]. New Purlieu Review: Life in the Second Decade of the Century, Issue 1. 2011.
Τρούσας, Φώντας. «Ο Θεοδόσης Άθας είναι ο στιχουργός του “Τζακ Ο’ Χάρα,” που είπε κάποτε ο Ζαμπέτας.» Δεκέμβριος 23, 2016.
Χουλιάρας, Γιώργος. Λεξικό Αναμνήσεων. Μελάνι 2013.
“Το ‘Λεξικό αναμνήσεων’ του Γιώργου Χουλιάρα συνιστά αλφαβητικό μυθιστόρημα της ζωής ενός συγγραφέα… και διαβάζεται με κάθε τρόπο που επιτρέπουν ή επιβάλλουν οι τεχνολογίες της ανάγνωσης.
Το “Λεξικό αναμνήσεων”… παρετυμολογεί τις εν λόγω περιστάσεις… συνδυάζει προβλέψεις περί διασποράς και αποκαλύπτει τις περιπετειώδεις συνέπειες των γάμων ρομαντισμού και κλασικισμού.
Το “Λεξικό” συνεπάγεται αλφαβητάριο για νεκρούς και ζωντανούς, που εκλιπαρούν… οπισθογραφούν… εκτυφλώνονται … και απασφαλίζουν αλγορίθμους της πυροτεχνουργικής ιστορίας της γλώσσας μας….”
Source
d) Poetry – Reviews
Anagnostou, Yiorgos. “Reading the Hyphen in Poetry.” Review of Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek American Poetry (Dean Kostos ed).
Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Vol. 29.2 (2011): 279-290.
Αρσενίου, Ελισάβετ. «Ελληνοαμερικανική οικειο-ποίηση.» Review of Διασπορικές Διαδρομές (Γιώργος Αναγνώστου). Η Αυγή Online, (6 Ιουλίου, 2014).
Kenny, Adele. Rev. of Redrawing Borders: Selected Poems, by Basil Rouskas. Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 38.1-2 (2012): 127-29.
Klironomos, Martha. Review of An Almost Pure Empty Walking (Tryfon Tolides). Harvard Review. Vol. 33 (2007): 214-215.
Kostos, Dean. Rev. of Your Own Ox-head Mask as Proof, by George Kalamaras. Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 38.1-2 (2012): 130-31.
Leontis, Artemis. Review of Ananios of Kleitor, Poems & Fragments and their Reception from Antiquity to the Present (George Economou). Athens Review of Books 1:9, 2010.
Leontis, Artemis. “Tryfon Tolides’ Joyous Book of Sadness.” Review of An Almost Pure Empty Walking. New York: National Herald Books, 2008.
Μπασκόζος, Γιάννης Ν. «Νίκος Αλεξίου: Ενας Πλακιώτης Μανχατανάς.» Ο Αναγνώστης. 11/27. Review of Astoria: Exile People Places (Nicholas Alexiou). oanagnostis.gr, 27 Nov. 2013.
Rakopoulos, Theodoros. “The Poetics of Diaspora: Greek US Voices.” Review Essay. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 34:1 (2016): 161–167. [Books reviewed:
e) Literature and Poetry Scholarship
Anagnostou, Yiorgos. “Roots, Return Narratives, Reclaiming ‘European Americans’: A Review Essay,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. 20. 2 (2011): 216–240. © 2019. [Review Essay of Theodora D. Patrona, Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/ Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 173 pp.; and Evangelia Kindinger, Homebound: Diaspora Spaces and Selves in Greek American Return Narratives. American Studies — A Monograph Series 257. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2015. 223 pp.]
Athanasiou-Krikelis, Lissi. Review of Theodora D. Patrona, Return Narratives. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2017). Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. 29 April, 2018. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/theodora-patrona-return-narratives
Dubrowski, Maria. U.S. Versus Them: How Institutions Have Shaped Greek-American Identity. Honors Thesis under the guidelines of Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 2001.
Fragopoulos, George. “The Politics and Poetics of Transliteration in the Works of Olga Broumas and George Economou.” MELUS 39.4 (Winter 2014).
Gatzouras, Vicky. “Negotiating the Hyphen: Ethnic and Female Identity in The Priest Fainted by Catherine T. Davidson.” Collusion and Resistance: Women Writing in English. Ed. Kerstin W. Shands. Flemingsberg: Sodertorns Hogskola, 2002. 174-188.
Gemelos, Michele. “Greek American Fiction.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature, Volume Two: D–H. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 2005. 873–877.
Georganta, Konstantina. “Home and Displacement: The Dynamic Dialectics of 1922 Smyrna,” Synthesis 5 (Fall 2013).
Hsu, Stephanie. “Ethnicity and the Biopolitics of Intersex in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex.” MELUS. Vol. 36, issue 3 (September 10, 2011): 87-110.
Kalogeras, Yiorgos. “Revenge and the ‘New’ Americans.” Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media. 1 (2018): 63–76.
A persistent theme in American ethnic fiction and film involves an ethnic or immigrant character who dreams of and/or performs an act of violence which goes against the law of the land; on the contrary, it is prescribed by a pre-American law, or unwritten custom. Application of such a pre-American law though engenders a question: why should a new American citizen resort to the dictates of a preindustrial past rather than to the laws of a modern, well-organized, bureaucratic society? This paper claims that, paradoxically, these acts inspired by a pre-American set of beliefs and attitudes expedite the transition of the immigrant and ethnic into the mainstream and post-ethnicity. Contextualized as part of organized crime, labor politics, predatory capitalism, the myth of the Golden Door these violent acts configure as ethnic but are motivated by the desire of the protagonist to join America and move on to a post- ethnic identity. The author analyzes Anzia Yezierska’s “The Lost Beautifulness” (1920), Harry Mark Petrakis’s “Pericles on 31st Street” (1957), and George Pelecanos’s “The Dead, Their Eyes Implore Us” (2003). Available online at, https://ejournals.lib.auth.gr/ExCentric/article/view/5995
Kenna, Margaret. Review of Theodora D. Patrona, Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 173 pp. Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, vol. 43, no. 2, 2019, pp. 328–32.
Stefanidou, Anastasia. “(Un)Doing the Anatolian Smile: War and Redemption in Elia Kazan’s Fiction.” Ex-Centric Narratives: Journal of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Media. 2 (2018): 8-26.
Elia Kazan’s stage and film work is primarily related to American society while his novels mostly deal with cultures and histories with which many American critics and readers are not familiar. Kazan often felt at war with the Anatolian culture he was raised in, but was just as critical of the American practices and ideologies he had to interact with. The lack of critical interest in Kazan’s fictional work does a disservice to his overall creative achievement. The essay discusses Kazan’s novels America America (1961), The Anatolian (1982), and Beyond the Aegean (1994), which draw on Kazan’s family history of subservience and persecution under the Ottoman rule in Asia Minor and their subsequent psychological and cultural traumas in America at the beginning of the twentieth century. With the complex view of both participant and observer, I argue that, in these novels, Kazan questions the unlimited opportunities that the dream of America offers and envisions new spaces of sociocultural resistance and alternative forms of happiness, which, however, usually come with the inevitable loss of one’s personal integrity and free will, and which leave the individual stranded within a world where redemption and belonging seem to be always postponed. Available online
Karanikas, Alexander. Hellenes and Hellions: Modern Greek Characters in American Literature. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.
Καραμπίνη-Ιατρού, Μιχαήλα. “Ποίηση και Έλληνες Μετανάστες στις Η.Π.Α.” Ένεκεν. Τεύχος 16 (2010): 138-144
Katsan, Gerasimus. 2015. “Greek America: Literary Representation and Immigrant Narratives in Papazoglou-Maragaris and Petrakis,” The Journal of Modern Hellenism 31, pp. 101-119.
Kindinger, Evangelia. “Of Dópia and Xéni: Strategies of Belonging in Greek American Return Narratives.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 20.2 (2011): 389-415.
—. “ ‘I was a tourist and a comer-home all simultaneously’: Crossing Borders in Greek American Return Writing.” Transnational American Studies. Ed. Udo J. Hebel. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter: 2012.
Klironomos, Martha. “The Topos of Home in New Greek-American Writing.” Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700: Society, Politics, and Culture. Dimitris Tziovas, ed. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. 241-255.
Klironomos, Martha. “‘Uncertain Histories Shared or Alone’: Memory in Postmodern Diasporic Writing.” Studia in Honorem Professoris Jacques Bouchard. [‘Festschrift in Honor of Prof. Jacques Bouchard.’] Ed. Dorina M. Magarin. Brasov, Romania: Editura Etnous, 2013. 91–110.
Kozyrakis, Yuliya. “Remembering the Future: Ethnic Memory in Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.” 2010.
McInery, Dennis Q. “Love and Death in the Fiction of Harry Mark Petrakis.”
Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora 38.1-2 (2012): 99-126.
….
Patrona, Theodora. “Mapping the Female Ethnic Self in the Family Battleground: Vertigo and the Greek American Novel.” Personal Effects: Essays on Memoir, Teaching, and Culture in the Work of Louise DeSalvo. Eds. Nancy Caronia, and Edvige Giunta. Fordham University Press, 2014. 210–221.
Patrona, Theodora D. Return Narratives: Ethnic Space in Late-Twentieth-Century Greek American and Italian American Literature. Madison, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2017.
Athanasiou-Krikelis, Lissi. Review of Theodora D. Patrona, Return Narratives. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2017). Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters. 29 April, 2018. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/books/theodora-patrona-return-narratives
….
Rentzou, Effie. “Stranger in the City: Self and Urban Space in the Work of Nicolas Calas.”
Journal of Modern Greek Studies 26.2 (2008): 283-309.
Stefanidou, Anastasia. “Greek American Poetry.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature, Volume Two: D–H. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 2005. 877–880.
Σωτηροπούλου, Χρυσάνθη, Η Διασπορά στην Ελληνική Κινηματογραφία. Επιδράσεις και επιρροές στη θεματολογική εξέλιξη των ταινιών της περιόδου 1945-1986. Διδακτορική Διατριβή, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (ΕΚΠΑ), Σχολή Νομικών, Οικονομικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, 1992.
Trendel, Aristi. “The Reinvention of Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex.” European Journal of American Studies Oslo Conference Special Issue 2 (2011): document 6.
Review of The Open Hearth: The First Generation: A Novel Immigration (Thomas Doulis) reviewed by Anastasia Stefanidou Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora Vol. 26.1-2 (2010).
Tsimpouki, Theodora. “Bi- or Mono-Culturalism?: Contemporary Literary Representations of Greek-American Identity.” On the Road to Baghdad or Traveling Biculturalism: Theorizing a Bicultural Approach to Contemporary World Fiction. Ed. Gönül Pultar. Washington D. C.: New Academia Publishing, 2005. 15-26.
f) Children’s Books
Aliki. Marianthe’s Story. New York. Greenwillow Books, 1998.
Marianthe’s Story, which includes illustrations, consists of two books in one: “Painted Words” and “Spoken Memories.” It’s a children’s book.
Although the words Greece or America are not used in the stories, the author herself was born to Greek parents and did not know the language when she began school in Philadelphia.
Book One, “Painted Words,” focuses on Marianthe’s adjustment to life in the new land and the difficulties she had in school since she did not know any of her classmates and was not able to communicate with them in the English language. Her teacher encourages her to use her paintings to tell her story. Through her paintings, and eventually through words, she relates her feelings and experiences.
In Book Two, “Spoken Memories,” Marianthe tells her classmates the story of her life in the close-knit rural village where she grew up before coming to the new land, using both spoken work and paintings. She describes the struggles through famine, war, and separation from the father. She explains: “People were leaving our poor village. They were going to a new land, hoping for a better life. First the father left, to work and save until their families could join them.” Marianthe, her twin brothers, and her mother join the father in the new land. Marianthe mentions the “sad goodbyes,” including “the people and the village we loved” and “the trees, the rocks, the birds.” However, the emphasis of the story of Marianthe is not on the sad goodbyes but on the new beginnings. (Elaine Thomopoulos)
Bunting, Eve. I Have an Olive Tree. New York: HarperCollins World, 1999.
After her grandfather’s death, eight-year-old Sophia fulfills his last request and journeys to Greece with her mother to see the land where her roots are.
D’Arc, Karen Scourby. My Grandmother is a Singing Yaya. New York: Orchard Books, 2001.
Lulu loves to hear her Greek grandmother sing when they are alone, but she is embarrassed by her grandmother’s exuberance in public–until a special picnic at school.
Lemperis, Athena with Georgia Vratanina, illustrator. Fun at YiaYia’s House. 2003. [self-published]
“This book of verse show the joy grandchildren share with theiryiayia on a visit to her home. Yiayia imparts Greek, as well as American traditions.”
Lord, Athena V. Today’s Special: Z.A.P. and Zoe. New York: Macmillan, 1984.
In upstate New York in 1939, eleven-year-old, Greek-American Zach contends with the varied problems and pleasures of growing up and with his little sister Zoe.
Lord, Athena V. Z.A.P., Zoe, and the Musketeers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Zach, his little sister Zoe, and their friends try to create an exciting summer in Albany, New York, in the early 1940s.
Monos, Dimitris and Sandra Stotsky. The Greek Americans. Chelsea House, 1996.
Papandrew, Karen. Stacy and the Greek Festival. Sequim, WA: Drew Pub., 1997.
Ten year old Stacy’s love for her great grandmother and pride in her Greek heritage are tested when she must decide between dancing at the Greek Festival or fulfilling her dream of riding horseback in the mountains – two events taking place on the same weekend.
Papandrew, Karen. Stacy and the Greek Village Wedding. Sequim, WA: Drew Pub., 2001.
Stacy and her family are off to the Greek islands where wedding preparations mix with the urgent search for a miracle-producing icon lost during World War II. While it is a time of firsts for Stacy who takes her first airplane trip, participates in her first wedding, and receives her first kiss, it is also a disturbing time for Papa who is just beginning to realize that his little girl of twelve is growing up.
Toufidou, Calliope. In My Grandmother’s Footsteps. Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, 2018.
This is a delightful book about grandmothers and their influence on their grandchildren. Narrated by Eleftherios, this warm and enlightening story shares what it is like growing up Greek with Yiayia. Filled with poems, Greek recipes, and photos, this timeless book can be shared from generation to generation.
e.) Literature and Poetry Scholarship
Bakken, Christopher and Yiorgos Anagnostou. “George Economou: Four Tributes.” Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 17 February 2020.
Lambropoulos, Vassilis. “What is Transnational about Greek American Culture?”. Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 17 February 2020.
Leontis, Artemis. “George Economou’s Invented Ethnicity.” Ergon: Greek/American Arts and Letters, 17 February 2020.