Listening to the Next Generation >> Emmanuel

People have said to me I’m not really white because I have such olive complexion and things like that. So on forms where you have to fill out your race, I check “other” and jot down Greek next to it. I recently started using the term Mediterranean. My family is from Karpathos, which is an island. So I’m more Mediterranean. When people ask me about my identity, I tell them I’m Greek American or Mediterranean. In the summertime when I get my tan, people think I’m maybe Hispanic or Egyptian. I’ve gotten the works in terms of race and ethnicity.

Got Greek? interviews Emmanuel V. from Temple University

My family is all from the island of Karpathos in Greece. I was born in the United States. My parents were both born and raised in Greece.

Q: How did your parents end up in the United States?

A: My father came to the United States when he was about twenty-two years old after earning an electrical degree in Athens as an electrician. He went to Baltimore and worked with his cousins there as a painter, because his Greek electrical degree wasn’t accepted in the U.S. So he had to do more schooling and learn English. Typical immigrant things. Then, when he was about 27, he went back to Greece for the summer where he ended up meeting my mother…My mother, on the other hand, had come to the United States when she was about 13 years old. Her family went to St. Louis and helped her uncle run a restaurant. My mom, I believe, attended two years of school here… That same summer my dad went back to Karpathos, so did my mom. My dad saw my mother and three days later, they were married. It was that quick. My father told his mom and then the mothers went to each other and then the families set it up. And within three days, the marriage ceremony happened. My mother was only 16. My dad was 27. So there was a really big age gap. So it was very traditional. My father brought her back to Baltimore where they built their lives and still live.

Q: What did they end up doing in Baltimore?

A: My father finally finished whatever other courses he needed to be an electrician here. He was actually working a few jobs between restaurants, painting, and electrical work. So he was finishing school while working. He went on to become an electrician and still is.

Q: When you were growing up, was Greek your first language?

A: Yes. I didn’t learn English until I was about four, which is basically when I went to school.  My mother stayed home with me and it took her a while to learn English. She doesn’t have so much of a Greek accent anymore. But my father still has an accent. We still speak Greek in the house today.

Q: What was that like going to school and having to learn English?

A: I don’t think it was hard. I don’t remember struggling at all. I grew up in Baltimore City’s Greektown area and would play in the alley with all the other Greek kids. We picked up English pretty fast. So it wasn’t a problem.

Q: What was it like growing up in Baltimore’s Greektown section?

A: I loved it and I still love it. Now that I’m in Philadelphia, I didn’t realize what I had in Baltimore until I left. But growing up in Greektown was great. We were only two or three blocks from St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox church. Everything revolved around church basically when I was growing up. Every Sunday, we would go to Sunday school. We had Greek school lessons two to three days a week. I attended first grade through sixth grade. There were also a lot of families like us from Karpathos, mainly from the towns of Olymbos and Diafani. But there were also Greek families from Samos, Rhodes, and Chios. I had Greek friends of course and American friends from school. I felt very at home in Greektown growing up with such a rich culture and other people to share that with.

Q: What are some of those cultural aspects you shared?

A: As a Greek American, you travel to Greece whenever it’s possible during the summertime and whenever you can. In the American perspective, or in a non-Greek perspective, Greece is this paradise. Yeah, Greece might be a paradise if you go for a week and you’re going to Santorini or Mykonos. But my family is not from any of those areas. Granted, we’re from an island. But it’s not as glamorous as perhaps what you see in the media. My friends and I have families back on Karpathos who are traditional. We talk about how our grandmas get up in the morning and feed the goats, chickens and tend to their olive trees. When I’m in Greece, I see traditional things, even how the women dress. On Karpathos, the women still wear things like black headbands and scarves, like the grandmother in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. That’s what I see. I don’t see any of the glamour. I just go there and see my family. I have a good time at the beaches, maybe go out with some cousins. That’s pretty much my life in Greece.

Q: How do both your American and Greek heritage affect your outlook on life?

A: From my American perspective, I have the American dream. I know that’s why my parents came here. My parents came here because, like I said, Greece isn’t glamorous and especially wasn’t in the previous generations. My parents came here to give my brothers and me opportunity and an education. I hear from cousins in Greece how difficult it is to get into a university there and the limited opportunities. So definitely being an American citizen, having the American dream and my educational values are what drive me. Then again, I don’t want to let go of my Greek heritage. I want to remember where I’m from…I see how hard my parents work. My dad gets up at five in the morning and doesn’t come home until five in the afternoon. My mom raised four kids and is still raising my youngest brother who’s seven. She works hard even though she’s not paid for what she does. Her payment, she tells us, is our success. So if we succeed, then that means she did her job. So I take my heritage in stride. I just look and try to reason why everything is the way it is. My parents obviously did this for a reason. They didn’t have nearly what I have now. Sometimes I get frustrated with people in Greece who’ve never been to the United States. They think because we’re American, we’re rich. That’s definitely not the case. We work for what we have and sometimes work 12 hours or more a day just to make it. I understand the economy in Greece isn’t great. But it’s a different work environment there with more summer vacation and time to relax.

Q: Are your grandparents on Karpathos still living?

A: My grandfathers died when I was young so I didn’t get to know them too well. I am named after my mother’s father. My mother’s mother now lives in Baltimore and I am close with her. I grew up with her during my teenage years. Whereas my father’s mother still lives on Karpathos but I’m also close with her. I’m also extremely close with a lot of my first cousins in Greece. I always call them. I do everything I can to keep in contact with them as well as my second cousins I’m close with. A lot of my first cousins were born here and slightly raised here. But for some reason or another, my aunts and uncles moved back to Greece. I try to go every other summer to Greece. It’s getting harder with school. School is very stressful. But if I can get even a month off, I’ll go to Greece for however long just to see everyone.

Q: With your cousins, do you swap music with each other?

A: Definitely. We burn each other CDs. We also send each other pictures. It’s nice.

Q: Do you keep up with current events in Greece?

A: Whenever I get a chance to go home, I watch the Greek news. That’s pretty unbiased compared to American news channels. I even keep up with global events that America decides to not put on their news. In the summertime when I’m off from school, I kind of get addicted to some Greek talk shows because it’s just so interesting. I also was really into the Greek program,  Fame Story. My family also gets the Karpathian newspaper sent to our house in Baltimore.

Q: While you are in college, what’s it like staying connected to the culture?

A: I came to Philadelphia mostly because I wanted to get away and try something new. I grew up with Greeks around me all the time. It kind of got to me and I wanted to start over. So that’s one reason I came here. But then once I came here, I actually met Greek people. Some of my best friends here now are Greek. So that’s how I definitely stay connected with my heritage…I have two roommates. They’re not Greek, though. But when it comes time to social events, I like doing things with my roommates. I always bring my roommates, even though they’re not Greek, to Greek events. I introduce my Greek friends to my non-Greek friends because I don’t like having two separate groups of friends. I like just bringing everyone together so we can have fun together. I don’t like having to schedule with two separate groups.

Q: In your room here at school, do you have any objects that speak to your Greek heritage?

A: I have a full size Greek flag hanging on my bedroom wall. It’s the kind of the flag you fly on a flag pole. It takes up almost the entire wall. I believe this flag belonged to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Baltimore near where I grew up. It blew off the flag pole or something, and I found it on the street. By the time I could return it to the church, they had gotten a new flag. So people come in my room, see this flag and ask if I’m Greek. I say, “How could you tell?” Other than that, I have worry beads [koumboloi in Greek], a little mati [decorative blue eye to ward off the evil eye]. Traditional Greek things that ward away the devil and things like that.

Q: To what extent do you eat Greek food while you are at school?

A: I’ve found a couple Greek restaurants to eat at. Also, when I go home, my mother will send me back to Philadelphia with home-cooked dishes of food to store in my freezer. So I just warm it up and I have Greek food. I also keep Gyro meat in my freezer and have pita bread on hand. I definitely love Greek food. I’ve grown up around it.

Q: When you think about relationship choices and possibly having a life partner down the road, how does your Greek heritage play a role?

A: I feel like my parents want me to marry Greek. They also say that religion is a huge part. Like I said before, we grew up a couple blocks from church. So church has always been a big part of our lives. My parents think some marriages between a Greek spouse and a non-Greek spouse fail because of religion. The issue becomes whether the children are going to be raised Greek Orthodox or not. My parents definitely want me to marry Greek Orthodox. I want to marry Greek Orthodox. I want to marry Greek. That’s just my preference because I’ve grown up around it. It’s not like I would purposefully try to marry non-Greek. That’s just what I would like. So I definitely want to marry Greek. My parents also say they would love to have a Karpathian Greek girl. They just hint at that. But we’ll see about that. I don’t know yet. I’m not ready for marriage at all. I’m 20 years old. I think I have a little ways to go.

Q: In terms of a career, what are you thinking about?

A: I’m a biology major at Temple right now. I’m also pre-pharmacy and want to go to pharmacy school to earn a doctorate. I definitely want to be a pharmacist. That decision came about because my mom’s brother, my uncle, had kidney failure. He moved from Greece to get a kidney transplant and stayed with us in Baltimore. It took about ten years total for him to even get a kidney. So growing up, I was always around his medication that was kept on the kitchen table. When my mom was not home, she relied on me to take calls in case my uncle’s doctor rang. Since my uncle lived with us for a while, we were his means of communication because he couldn’t really speak English. So as a young teenager, I’d take calls on his behalf and write down various instructions and explain it to him in Greek. That’s what kind of sparked my career interest in pharmacy. I knew I always wanted to be in the medical field. My uncle’s situation inspired that.

Q: In terms of identity, do you use terms like Greek American, Greek, American with Greek background, another term?

A: People have said to me I’m not really white because I have such olive complexion and things like that. So on forms where you have to fill out your race, I check “other” and jot down Greek next to it. I recently started using the term Mediterranean because I heard someone else use it. My family is from Karpathos, which is an island. So I’m more Mediterranean. When people ask me about my identity, I tell them I’m Greek American or Mediterranean. In the summertime when I get my tan, people think I’m maybe Hispanic or Egyptian. I’ve gotten the works in terms of race and ethnicity. Hispanic is very popular especially when I gel and spike my hair. And then my name is Emmanuel, and Manny is often a common Latino name.

Q: Going forward, how do you want to stay connected to your Greek heritage?

A: One way is through music. The music of Karpathos is very specific to our island. We have the lyra, the three-string instrument. We have the tsambouna, which is the sheep skin type of bagpipe. I want to keep listening to it. I also want to hold onto the traditional dress of the island in some way. If I have daughters, that’s one way I could hold onto that. If I have a daughter, I’ll have my mom make her traditional Karpathian dresses. In terms of dresses, there’s the fousta [skirt] that is colorful and beady; and another one that’s darker. Usually the difference between the two different traditional outfits are younger women wear the colorful ones. Then as soon as you get married, you tend to wear the darker ones. Younger unmarried women also wear rows of gold. When they get married, they take off most of it and keep one row. My mother, for example, only keeps one big row of gold around her neck.

Q: When do people in your family’s town of Olymbos dress like this?

A: When you visit Olymbos now, some of the older women dress in all black traditional outfits. On holidays like Tis Panagias, which is the 15^th of August, that’s when the younger generation dresses up. The younger generation does not dress up on a daily basis.

Q: Before we wrap up, is there anything you wanted to talk about?

A: I feel like I have a tight grip on my heritage. I never want to lose it. Being full Greek and everything, I feel like it’s my responsibility. But I also see other Greeks who completely let go and become very Americanized. That’s not a bad thing. They might not have the opportunity like I did to visit Greece as often. But I feel like a lot of people aren’t holding onto their heritage. I just don’t ever want people to forget where they came from. Because it’s very important to know where you came from in order to establish your own new life. Because I feel like you need to learn from your past. I learned from my parents. I know how they grew up. I know what they went through and I learned from that. And now, I want to step it up a level. I want to go above and beyond what they were able to do. And I just feel like a lot of people don’t keep hold of that. They just forget.

Q: Thank you for your time.

A: No problem. Thank you.