Listening to the Next Generation >> Elise

If there’s an issue, especially if I’ve heard about it in mainstream American news, I’ll go online to read the Kathimerini newspaper and see what the Greek perspective is. Even if it’s not an issue about Greece, I like to get the different perspective on world issues that you can get from Greek news.

Got Greek? interviews Elise L. from Harvard University

Both my parents are of Greek descent. My mother was born in Greece, outside of Thebes and was raised there. She came over to the United States as a young child. My father was born in the United States and grew up in the Detroit area. Both of his parents were from the island of Chios in Greece.

Q: What did your grandparents end up doing to earn a living?

A: My grandparents from my mother’s side had worked as tailors in Greece and continued doing that in the United States. On my dad’s side, they were more established in the United States and ran a restaurant and various other businesses. But when I was growing up, there were no restaurants in my family. That ended with my grandparents’ generation. As immigrant communities go, people went to college afterwards and the restaurants kind of fell by the wayside.

Q: How did your parents meet?

A: They met as college students in the Detroit area. They were both pharmacy students at the time.

Q: What was it like growing up in the Michigan Greek community?

A: The Michigan community, especially, after having left Michigan is kind of unique. In that it’s unfortunately really spread out. There’s a lot of different Greek churches, which is nice and also not nice because the communities are very much spread out. So many different churches means that in each church, the youth is a small group. But the good thing the Detroit area did have was a summer camp that’s in the middle of Michigan: Rose City, Michigan. I attended that nearly every summer growing up. It was a nice way to meet the other Greek children from other churches around the state.

Q: When you were growing up, did you spend time with friends from the Greek community?

A: I had some friends from church and Greek school. Even Greek school was very spread out with so many churches. But most of my friends were not of Greek descent. There were not very many children of Greek descent in my schools. But from elementary to high school, I often gravitated towards making friends with children who also had some sort of ethnic background. My best friends growing up had Armenian, Chinese and Indian backgrounds. They sort of understood what it meant having a different cultural background. In that way, it was less shocking to them when they were exposed to my Greek side. But it was also less of a need for explanations because they seemed to understand that kind of background.

Q: Now that you’re older and in law school, what do you convey to friends about your Greek heritage?

A: I don’t think people ask questions necessarily. In a place like this, it’s very diverse. Someone who’s been born and raised in the United States doesn’t seem quite so exotic and interesting if they’re interested in people of other cultures. In terms of conveying things, this is sort of silly to say, but the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding seems to have given people a picture of what it means to be Greek American. So there will be jokes back and forth about that. But it doesn’t seem that people necessarily have an interest in probing deeper than that.

Q: By the way, what’s your take on My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

A: I thought it was cute. Some people, particularly, the Greeks from Greece and who’ve spent less time in America, weren’t so fond of the movie. I think it does cast Greeks in a certain light. In some ways, it’s very accurate. In some ways, it’s very particular to a certain segment of the Greek American communities, which may exist in certain parts of the country or in certain times. Large parts of it were not telling of my experience of growing up, but were not so shocking that I didn’t believe they were part of some Greek Americans’ experiences of growing up.

Q: The movie does focus on the main character marrying someone not of Greek descent. In terms of your own relationships, and perhaps thinking about a life partner down the road, how does your Greek heritage factor in?

A: If you were to ask my mother, she would tell you that being with someone Greek is paramount. Me, that’s something I’m still deciding. I think it’s important. I think it would be nice. It would be like icing on the cake nice. It’s hard. The Greek identity is an important one and it’s one among many. I’m also a law student and plan on working in Washington D.C. There’s a lot of different things, whether in relationships, those things take priority or there’s more commonality than just a common background and language. Ideally, there’d be all the components. But hard to know.

Q: Have you been to Greece?

A: I’ve been a couple times with my family. I also studied abroad in Thessaloniki as a college student. I’ve returned since, and I’ve also gone to Cyprus on an internship. I really enjoyed the study abroad experience. It was only my second time returning to Greece. I’d gone once at 16 with my family and this was my second time, at 19 and going on my own. It was a really incredible program that I was able to go through the University of Michigan. They host students from around the world, mostly not Americans, who are studying the Greek language. So it was a great opportunity to get to know Greece personally outside of my family and make my own connections; and to see how many students from different parts of the world, from other places in Europe to China, were interested in studying Greek culture and Greek language. They were so invested in Greek culture and Greek language. I had a Norwegian roommate who spoke Greek better than I did and had no conn2ection to Greece whatsoever than a personal interest. So it was a really neat experience.

Q: How do you feel when you are in Greece?

A: It has changed over time. I think my first time going to Greece at 16, I really did feel it was incredible to be some place that feels like home that you’ve never visited before. Having gone there since and spending more time, obviously once reflected, it becomes more nuanced. I realized it was great to have a tie to this place. But it’s also very different to not have been raised there and there’s a lot of cultural differences and expectations on you of being of Greek descent that would not be the case for people who are, for example, from China. I think there are expectations about how to act. Even just proper etiquette in certain situations, be it polite or not polite. Just knowing that should be something you would understand and know how to appropriately act in a situation; whereas someone who’s considered more of an outsider might not.

Q: While you were studying in Greece, did you have contact with relatives?

A: I didn’t. I don’t have very many close relatives in Greece.

Q: So your experience there was definitely more of a student experience.

A: It was a student experience through the program. The program was run by the Greek government, by the ministry of tourism and the ministry of education, together. The hotel where we stayed was actually a training school for Greek students learning about hotel management and things along those lines. So I was fortunate to make friends with Greeks who are about my age, who are not my relatives, and get a chance to kind of experience the country through their eyes.

Q: Before we started the interview, you mentioned that you had minored in Greek Studies as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. Talk a bit about how you came to do that.

A: I think it’s probably a common story amongst people of my generation who were forced to go to Greek school as small children and didn’t like missing their Saturday morning cartoons. Really it was a choice of mine at that point to study Greek in college. I was really interested in doing it and excited to. I realized that my Greek was to the point where I could only speak to my grandmother and relatives about food and other daily matters. But not so much about politics, or about things that were more abstract or theoretical. I really wanted to be able to engage at that level. Whether I achieved that or not, I’m not sure. But I definitely improved. It was really interesting. Beyond the language, I began studying Greek in order to improve my language skills. But I really was interested in history classes, particularly modern Greek history. So often, earlier in my college career, I had studied the ancient history and it seems to be a big place of emphasis. But it seems there’s less focus on the modern times and even maybe the Ottoman times, and I thought that was really fascinating to learn about. And culture, we read Greek poetry and more recent fiction and non-fiction writings, and I enjoyed that.

Q: To what degree are you connecting with your Greek heritage while in law school?

A: I’ve definitely taken advantage of being here in Cambridge, where there is and in Boston as well, a big academic population. There will be talks a lot. There will be various ministers from Greece, cabinet members, and others who will come and give a talk here. I really do like to go and hear what they have to say and stay in touch with what’s going on in Greece specifically and from their perspective. In fact, I was not able to go but just this week, there was a Greek man here who was on some level involved in the European Union on issues of the environment. So it happens really fairly frequently that there’s people here speaking on those issues.

Q: Do keep up with Greek current events and go online to do so?

A: Absolutely. If there’s an issue, especially if I’ve heard about it in mainstream American news, I’ll go online to read the newspaper, Kathimerini, and see what the Greek perspective is. Even if it’s not an issue about Greece, I like to get the different perspective on world issues that you can get from Greek news. I enjoy keeping connected to Greece that way. And from time to time, I also listen to Greek radio online and enjoy that.

Q: Where you live right now, do you have an objects that you identify with your Greek background?

A: Yes. I have a little iconastasio [icon display] in my room, which I’m sure your average law school student does not. But that’s something I grew up with and that I like to have. Beyond that, probably the food that I stock in my kitchen so I can cook Greek food from time to time.

Q: How do you identify yourself: Greek, Greek American, American with Greek roots, American, something else?

A: That’s really interesting. I probably use Greek American. But since you said American with Greek roots, I will often times say my family is from Greece and in maybe some way, it’s an attempt to distinguish myself from Greek Americans who are third, fourth, or fifth generation. Since I think how close your family is to Greece really gives you a very different perspective on Greek culture and Greek community and your relationship to that. So maybe that’s a way to distinguish.

Q: Going forward, what Greek values do you want to hold onto?

A: I think that’s a tricky question because I think that it varies so much and it’s kind of hard to group it altogether as Greek culture. Because it does, even between my two parents, vary. It can vary by regional identity in Greece, political backgrounds in Greek politics, the time when they left Greece, the reason for leaving Greece. I think so much of that changes this general value system. I mean, of course there’s the general value systems that I think Greeks share with a lot of other immigrant groups: family, hardworking, education. But those are really broad. But beyond that, I find it’s really hard to lump Greeks or Greek Americans together as one big group.

Q: How about from your own parents? What do you value from them?

A: I mean the emphasis on family is definitely huge and my family is very important to me, maybe more so than some of my peers. The decision to be moving to different parts of the country is one that I treat seriously and one with a lot of consideration. That’s hard to know, looking in the future, how things will shape out.

Q: Before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to share?

A: Since you’re involved with the Next Generation Initiative, I do have to say that I discovered this group over the summer while I was working as an intern in Washington D.C. It represented to me a piece of Greek American identity that I wish I had growing up and that I do planning on using in the future. The reason I say I wish I had it is I feel like that’s a piece that’s been missing in a lot of Greek communities. The idea of Greek Americans as professionals and as integrated in a lot of ways into general American culture, and not just as religion or as parties at the bar. That part has always been hard for me, and I think, for a lot of other Greek Americans who are kind of in my shoes. You feel there’s a divide where you almost need to pick and choose, not entirely, but certain elements of one or the other. So with the Next Generation Initiative, it was the first time for me that I saw it in a combined in a way. There are so many other young Greek Americans like me who are spread out but don’t get a chance to interact. That’s something I hadn’t realized necessarily that was missing until I had the chance to see it with the Next Generation Initiative and be a part of it and make some friends that way. I think it’s great and I’m looking forward to doing more of it.

Q: Thanks for the interview.