Listening to the Next Generation >> Steve

In high school, I  really started feeling animosity from other Greek kids about being half Greek. My last name is not Greek, and they would tell me I wasn’t Greek. So that was kind of hard. How can you fit into a group like that if they’re exiling you? And saying you’re not Greek enough? That’s definitely been a thing- the “not Greek enough” issue.

Got Greek? interviews Steve K. from the University of Chicago

My mom is Greek. My dad is an American mutt. He’s mainly German and English. Naturally, the Greek side dominated. But my mom was born in Greece in a small little horio [village] called Neos Skopos in Macedonia. It’s by Serres, which is the big city around there. My mom came over to the United States when she was six months old. So my pappou, my grandpa, initially came over while my yiayia [grandmother] was pregnant, and set up everything in America. Then, she came over with my aunt and my mom when they were little. They initially stopped over in New York, then came to Chicago and had a third child who’s my other aunt.

Q: What did your grandparents do to earn a living once they got to Chicago?

A: Pretty much odd jobs. I know my yiayia [grandmother] was a seamstress and my pappou [grandfather] was a baker. I think he also did a little bit of carpentry. So they did what they could, I guess.

Q: When your mom was growing up here in Chicago, was she living n a Greek-speaking household?

A: Yes. She spoke Greek at home. Actually, the funny story she tells me is that she went to kindergarten and she started speaking this weird jumble of Greek and English to the kindergarten teacher. Of course she eventually picked up English. I think she’s more comfortable in English now, being here pretty much her whole life. My pappou [grandfather] died when I was six, and I know he had a better grasp of the language than my yiayia [grandmother]. She hardly speaks any English. The neighborhood that they lived in was pretty Greek. I know my mom’s elementary school had many Greek kids. So they all kind of spoke Greeklish [Greek and English combined] to each other.

Q: What neighborhood in Chicago would that have been?

A: I think it was in the Ravenswood area on the north side, on Montrose and Damon in between  Montrose and Foster.

Q: How did your parents end up meeting?

A: My dad actually grew up on a farm in central Illinois. He’s pretty American. My grandparents are still down there farming. They have hogs. My dad moved to Chicago, which is two hours away from where he grew up. In Chicago, he started working at a bank where my mom also worked. They met each other, fell in love, and got married.

Q: How was your parents’ marriage received among your grandparents?

A: I think my mom’s parents were completely accepting. They saw my dad as a good guy and that my mom loved him. But my dad’s parents they had no idea what my mom was. They had never encountered a Greek person before. They weren’t quite sure what her racial identity was when they first met. That was kind of an issue. They were kind of conservative, farmer folks. I think they pretty much asked her, “Are you white? Are you black?”  And she told them, “I’m Greek. It’s white.” They had no experience with it before.

Q: What was growing up with Greek heritage like in your household?

A: We pretty much consider ourselves 100% Greek, even though we’re not. Everything was Greek. My mom cooks Greek food. Every day while my mom was at work after school, we went over to my yiayia’s [grandmother’s] house and she took care of us. So my sister and I had a lot of exposure to the Greek side, as my dad’s parents were two hours away. So we had a lot of the Greek family around. Actually my family, both my aunts and yiayia [grandmother]— we all lived pretty much within two miles of each other. Then we moved right outside the city to the suburbs and live even closer now to each other. We’re like a mile away. It’s definitely walking distance for all of us. So that’s good. Me and my cousins, we’re all pretty close. It’s good. No one even went away to college. I went away the furthest to the south side at University of Chicago. So I’ve lived in the dorms while my cousins commute to different schools downtown.

Q: You mentioned your grandmother and how you spent a lot of time with her as a child. Did she speak Greek around you?

A: Yes and no. It’s like she speaks Greek to us and we speak English back to her. We definitely understand each other. Growing up, we knew words and we spoke them back to her. But my sister and I were by no means fluent and kind of still aren’t.

Q: Did you go to school with other children of Greek descent?

A: My sister, cousin and I were the only Greek kids in the whole school. We grew up on the northwest side of Chicago, and it was very Polish and Hispanic. So we never really had a huge Greek community immediately around us. But we went to Sunday school and Greek school, and knew other Greek families to the point they’re pretty much considered family.

Q: So how did you explain your Greek heritage to your school friends?

A: It was mainly through food. My mom would cook and they would come over. That’s pretty much it. We just always were Greek. Just like our best friends growing up I think were Filipino, half Filipino and Serbian, and Palestinian. So it was just like this weird group. They would expose us to their culture, and we would expose them to Greek culture.

Q: Growing up, did you ever experience any sentiments from the Greek community about being half Greek?

A: In high school, I really started feeling animosity from other Greek kids about being half Greek. My last name is not Greek, and they would tell me I wasn’t Greek. So that was kind of hard. How can you fit into a group like that if they’re exiling you? And saying you’re not Greek enough? That’s definitely been a thing- the “not Greek enough” issue.

Q: How have you come to cope with that?

A: I tell them my mom was born in Greece and ask them when their family came over from Greece. Most of them, I have found, are second or third generation. So I throw it back at them. I could start speaking Greek to them if I wanted to. But I feel like I’ve proven my Greekness, and not that I need to.

Q: Once you got to University of Chicago, did you find yourself connecting to your Greek heritage in a different way?

A: To my knowledge, there really aren’t that many of us on campus. My first year, there were few Greek students. But they were fourth years and I hung out with them a little bit. I went to the Orthodox Christian Fellowship [OCF] and I was trying to scope out if any other Greek people were there. Most of them in the OCF on campus are converts. They’re like whatever nationality. I couldn’t find it through there. I took a Modern Greek language class from a grad student who was Greek. He helped me, my second year, try and connect to the Greek community. So that was good. He actually taught my sister at UIC [University of Illinois at Chicago] downtown. We had the same Greek professor. It was kind of funny. While she was taking Greek, I was taking Greek from the same professor.

Q: Have you visited Greece?

A: Yes. I studied abroad in Athens. It was wonderful. Three months. It was kind of hard being away from my family for that long because I really hadn’t left my family before. So three months was the longest I had been away. But it was helped by the fact I was around the Greek culture the whole time. I loved Athens. I travelled a lot. I actually didn’t make it to the horio where my mom came from because it’s really far away from everything. My mom promises me we’re going to go there after I graduate probably. I’d love to see it. But I went all over the place. It was wonderful. It was the first time I had been in Greece. What was also great is that my sister at the time was on a college-related month long trip in Europe and their last stop was in Greece. So instead of doing the scheduled events that her program had planned for her, she came and I took her around everywhere for two weeks. That was the first time either of us had been to Greece, and also the first time anyone in my family had really visited since when I was born. The last time my mom to Greece was when she was about 12. Money has always been an issue.

Q: What was your overall reaction to being in Greece?

A: I definitely just felt connected right from the get go. In the United States, it’s always been that people see me as “the Greek.”  Instead, in Greece, everybody is Greek. So that was really great. When Easter came around, everybody celebrates on the same day. Whereas in the United States, my aunt always goes to the store and has to buy Easter candies and hold onto them until Greek Easter comes around. Overall, I wasn’t surprised by anything in Greece because I had been exposed to much of the culture growing up. It was also nice having other students in the program who weren’t Greek. I could gage their experience or their reaction to all these experiences that we were having. I could explain to them why things happen a certain way. I did all the ordering in all the restaurants we went to. The food was really great. But my mom’s cooking was a lot better than pretty much all the restaurants there. I’m biased.

Q: To what extent would you say your experience in Greece has affected your outlook on your heritage?

A: I would say that I just feel like I’m part of something bigger almost. The friends that I made in Greece kind of grounded me in a weird way. They had talked about how Greek Americans are, I don’t know how to put it, overly Greek. They were kind of making fun of them. I told them it’s really not like that. You can see how both the American Greeks and the Greek Greeks view each other. It was definitely eye-opening. But being in Greece, it’s the motherland idea. I felt connected to everything. Especially going around to the ruins, I felt maybe my ancestors could have built this or that, and was amazed by how much we’ve accomplished as a people. It was just really great to feel that and see that and experience it firsthand.

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

A: I use Greek. When someone asks me what I am, I say Greek. I don’t really qualify it with American. I feel like that’s assumed.

Q: Where you live on campus, do you have any objects you associate with your Greek heritage?

A: I have about a four-by-six foot map of Greece on my bedroom wall. I have mini Greek flags. I have lots of pictures from my trip, one of them being my screen saver on my computer. I think that’s about it.

Q: So you are reminded of Greece every time you use your computer.

A: Yes. I only went a year and a half ago, and would love to go back as soon as possible. Maybe with more of my family. I dragged my sister around to all of the ruins. She was ready to kill me. She told me that if she saw another rock, she would scream. But I’m really interested in the history.

Q: Do you read up about Greece or Greek things?

A: When I was little, I did that a lot more. Then I got working knowledge of all of the past. My family told me a little bit about it. When I was little, I used to go to the library. Here at school, I have taken a few classes. One was called Greek Thought and Literature. It’s pretty much the Iliad and Homer and all that stuff. The classes that I took in Greece were split up into an ancient history portion and then a poetry, drama, theater and comedy portion, comedy portion. During the last half, we studied the Hellenistic, Byzantine and Modern periods. So it was really good. I feel like I’m pretty well versed in Greek history.

Q: Did you see the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

A: Yes. I thought it was pretty accurate, albeit a bit exaggerated. Everything was spot on except for the Windex thing. I don’t know where that came from. So I guess the one cure fits all rule can kind of fit in. We use Windex on glass and that’s pretty much it in our family.

Q: Could you relate at all to any characters in the movie?

A: I definitely related to the main character in the way that she’s trying to balance herself as being both American and Greek at the same time. Being stuck. I might have to leave and go away to grad school. I’m applying to grad school now, and I’m thinking about places that are not within Chicago. That has definitely caused a lot of problems for my mom. I’m trying to shelter her until I find out where I’m actually going to go. We had talked about it and she asked if I was thinking about applying to other places in the country. I told her yes. We were talking on the phone and she was just kind of silent for like a minute. Then she told me that I’m not leaving Chicago and hung up. It was bad. It’s just like family can be overbearing but I love them. I’m thinking about doing a Ph.D. program, which usually lasts on average six years. So being away for six years is kind of daunting. My sister has said she’ll move with me. She’ll definitely move with me because we’re very close. I don’t know if my mom could handle both of her kids being somewhere else. I don’t know how long she’d last. Like I said, my mom has two sisters and they live within two miles of my house. So we cousins are all close. My oldest cousin actually got married and moved six blocks away from my family. So now we have four households within the same area. I don’t know if I can leave. Family is a big deal. In fact, I’ve heard this from everyone multiple times: it’s the most important thing in the world.

Q: One of the main themes in My Big Fat Greek Wedding revolves around the main character not marrying someone of Greek descent. In terms of your own relationships, and perhaps thinking about a life partner, where does the Greek thing factor in?

A: My mom really wants me to marry a Greek girl. She’s told me that even though she didn’t marry Greek, that doesn’t mean I don’t have to marry a Greek. Um, we’ll see. I haven’t really thought about it, yet. I feel like I’m kind of young. But I’m not going to limit myself. But it would definitely be a plus. Definitely would be very convenient. However, my cousin just got married to a Greek girl and there was a lot of drama between the families. I don’t know if I want to experience that. Actually my yiayia [grandmother] told me that I might be better off just not marrying a Greek. We’ll see.

Q: Going forward in your life, how do you see yourself staying connected to your Greek heritage?

A: I’d like to be fluent in the language. I have a working knowledge. I can get around. In Greece, it definitely got better. I never had any problems conversing. It’s just that I can’t hold the conversation for very long, especially if I want to talk about what I do academically or career-wise. I don’t know how to even say the first thing about that stuff. So I’d like to get better. When I do have kids, I’d like them to go to Greek school and learn early and get completely fluent before it becomes harder, and not be like me.

Q: Thank you for the interview.