Funny enough, diaspora is a Greek word. Διά meaning across and σπείρω meaning to spread -- we’re a scattered people. Built into the foundation of our society is the need to leave and find a new home. Greeks have faced diaspora since antiquity. First leaving the homeland to inhabit colonized areas and to expand the Greek empire, then later fleeing after WWI and a Greek Civil War that left the nation-state battered and broken. Economic recessions, divisive leadership, or even just the chance for a fresh start, Greeks have spread themselves far across the world but what remains is an intrinsic tie to the homeland.
Within four generations of arriving in the United States, a language will cease to exist as a shared tongue among family members. Defined, I am a heritage language speaker of Greek. Not entirely fluent but also not entirely beginner, my tongue exists somewhere in the middle. In the United States, Greek is a minority language with the dominant language being English. Greek is the private language of our home but English has seeped in through the cracks in our foundation. My siblings and I speak English to one another, never once using Greek. Our father primarily speaks English to us but Greek with our mother. Our mother speaks Greek to us and we reply in Greek, however, unintentionally, we code-switch to English in times when our words fail us.
In hopes of reversing language shift, members of the Greek Orthodox church created an after-school program to teach the youth the language of the homeland. Every Tuesday, my brother and I would be driven to the church and made to sit in a small classroom learning Greek. It was a futile endeavor. We had already been deeply Americanized. I hated Greek School, as it had come to be called. So did my brother. We fought with our parents. We never wanted to go. We just wanted to be normal Americans. After a failed attempt at home schooling, Greek language education was effectively shelved within our home.
I will always be hyphenated. Greek-American is how I tend to identify myself, with the Greek part always listed first. One of the only sermons I remember from my childhood attending the Greek Orthodox church is the priest emphatically proclaiming that Greek-American and American-Greek are interchangeable. One should be proud to be both an American and a Greek and should not prioritize one over the other, he exclaimed. Spoken first in Greek and then again in English, his sermon was tinged with irony. He, himself, could not place our new culture before the one rooted in our blood.
Americans will always view me as Greek, never really American, asking me when I arrived in the United States, despite being born and raised here. To them, I am an ambassador here to answer all their questions about my culture as neatly as possible. Do Greeks still believe in Zeus? No. Where should I visit in Greece? I don’t know, Athens, maybe. How do you pronounce gyro? It’s pronounced yee-row. Greeks, however, will never truly think of me as Greek. My pronunciation of Greek words is soured by its American upbringing. To them, I am an Ελληνοαμερικανός. The American portion of me is merged so deeply with the Greek it becomes one entirely other identity not separated by space, comma, or hyphen.
My mother once confessed to me that she hesitated when naming me Demosthenes, the name of her father. She worried I would never truly fit in and that I would be bullied for my name. Dealing with a lifetime of micro-aggressions, mispronunciations, and an Anglicization that is different than its Greek origins, she was not entirely wrong in her apprehensions, however, I am glad she did not give in. Yesterday, after a morning spent writing in a coffee shop, I stopped in a sandwich place on my way home. Reading the receipt, the cashier, with genuine interest, exclaimed, “What a powerful name. What does it mean?” “It’s Greek and it means power of the people,” I proudly replied.
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Captain Marvel - Marvel Studios (In Theaters)
“#Robyn Afterparty at the E train station after the @robynkonichiwa show at MSG” - Dancing On My Own, Robyn