Interview with Adrianne Kalfopoulou Reader Views is happy to welcome Adrianne Kalfopoulou, author of “Broken Greek: a language to belong.” Adrianne is being interviewed by Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views. Juanita: Thanks for talking with us today Adrianne. Would you please tell us what your memoir, “Broken Greek: a language to belong” is about?
Juanita: What inspired you to write “Broken Greek”? Adrianne: A lot of things. There was the sense of loss and love for the Greek world that came from my grandparents. Something that barely exists today. And then there were the series of ongoing, rather dramatic experiences I had as I found myself making a life in Greece. In some ways the book’s been an effort to reconcile and make sense of these experiences. Juanita: Adrianne, I understand that you weren’t born in Greece. Would you tell us about your travels throughout childhood and how you eventually began living in Greece for the first time? Adrianne: Sure. I was born in Vietnam, what was then Saigon. My father wasn’t in the army (people always assume that when I mention where I was born). He was a business man involved with importing engineering parts and equipment for countries in Southeast Asia. We traveled a lot. Indonesia. Japan. Then there was a stint when my parents tried to send me to boarding school in Switzerland which turned into a minor disaster. We also moved to Bangkok when the war got worse in Vietnam. But we kept coming back to Greece to stay with my father’s parents. I guess I’ve always been dislocated on some level, born and raised in cultures that weren’t native to me, which has probably fed into this theme of belonging which comes up in Broken Greek. Juanita: How did you end up going to university and working in the United States? When and why did you leave the U.S. and move back to Greece? Adrianne: We moved to Connecticut at the end of my junior year in high school, it was a massive culture shock to say the least (!) I had some all-time low SAT scores (I’d never even heard of the test), but I had this super grade point average and some very enlightened and supportive high school counselors who flagged my applications to college when I was pretty clueless about what to do or where to go. I ended up getting into Brown on their early-decision admissions offer, and it changed my life. In some ways I think my college education gave me a discourse, or the world view, to understand some of the complexities of Greece. I came back because my grandparents were very old by then, and I felt a need to learn more about their lives while I still could. Juanita:“Broken Greek” is a collection of narratives that portrays your changing relationship with Greece, and Greek culture. What are some of the experiences you write about? Adrianne: It begins with my coming back to stay with my grandparents, their world basically defines how I first experienced the culture. Then the memoir moves pretty abruptly into contemporary Athens, and specifically Athens traffic; it felt like an apt metaphor for the transition from an older, more nurturing life (that was personified by my grandparents), to a harsher present. Then there was my rather epic effort to buy a house on the island of Patmos…which is the island where St. John the Divine wrote the Apocalypse, but I’ll let readers find out the rest… Juanita: I understand that you went through much frustration and anger at times, trying to negotiate your way through the cultural differences. Would you tell us more about your emotional journey and how you balance it all now? Adrianne: Well there were some tough moments that had to do with my sheer ignorance of how the state system, particularly the bureaucratic aspects of it, worked. In some ways I feel like I was caught in the crossfire of a culture in transition. When I first came back to Greece, the Socialist Party (PASOK) had just won a landslide election in 1981 after almost half a century of right-wing rule including a dictatorship, so there was a lot of hope for change. The Greek poet, and Nobel Laureate, George Seferis once noted that some of the richest times in a culture are at moments of great change, but they can also be very painful moments. I don’t know that I manage the frustrations any better now, but they’ve become more familiar. Juanita: In “Broken Greek,” you talk about the system, and becoming “one of them”? Would you explain what this means? Adrianne: The Greeks can be cabalistic about sticking together, that’s been especially proven by their history of invasions and oppressions. From the Ottomans through WWII and the Nazi Occupation, and then the Junta, so while on a casual level they are very open, and hospitable, on a deeper more fundamental level really becoming ‘one of theirs’ is a lot harder. Juanita: What does “broken Greek” mean? Adrianne: I borrowed the idea of a ‘broken’ voice from the African-American cultural critic bell hooks (she doesn’t use capitals for her name). I love what she says in her essay about ‘Choosing the Margin’ when she discusses how complex the idea of ‘coming to voice’ can be for disenfranchised people. She makes a point that the anger and pain that cause the ‘brokenness’ are also what contribute to silencing that brokenness in dominant political contexts. The idea helped me articulate how it felt to be speaking a less-than-fluent Greek and having that trigger assumptions about my not being ‘one of them’. Juanita: You ended up going back to the U.S. for a sabbatical, yet still returned to Athens. Why was this trip to America so eye-opening for you? Adrianne: I’d lived in the States and went to college in the 80s, so I was really surprised by the changes after over a decade. There seemed to be so much more automation. I was amazed for example by the phone recordings for almost all services. Or how seemingly polite salespeople could be but when faced with something ‘outside of the manual’ as you’d put it, they could become intolerant, i.e. I didn’t own an American driver’s license so when I was asked for a second ID for checks, people wouldn’t accept my (American) passport. It gave me a new appreciation for the more personal interactions that still take place in Greece. Juanita: Was it your grandparents that were from Greece, and why was it so important for you to fit into the land of your ancestry? Adrianne: Yes, my paternal grandparents. They had a remarkable history having come from Asia Minor, or what Greeks still call ‘Constantinoupoli’, today’s Istanbul. They were forced to move back to Greece in the early 1930s as were many Greeks, a lot of them right after the Smyrna massacre that took place in 1922. History came alive through their stories which came to define a lot of my childhood, and by extension the country I’d associated with their love. Juanita: Adrianne, would you elaborate more on “Broken Greek’s” theme of belonging? Adrianne: Yes, thanks for that question. I’ve lived a major part of my life in Greece, my father’s Greek, and I have Greek citizenship. But I learned there were very specific (unwritten) codes of conduct, and assumptions that probably go very far back to an innate suspicion of what I’ll call the ‘Other’ that initiate a person into the culture. Even friends of mine who have left, and work in other parts of Europe or the States, are suddenly outsiders when they come back to visit and assume, like I did, even simple chores or straight-forward tasks like buying a house, or trying to get a job in the public sector, involve straight-forward procedures. It’s never that simple. People want to know a lot more about you than what’s officially required before they decide to help which sounds intrusive and unprofessional but it’s almost essential to getting anything done. Juanita: With all the places you’ve traveled and lived, you now call Greece your home. How does this feel for you today? Adrianne: Mixed. I’m fond of the intimacy of exchanges here, but I still get impatient when things don’t work out because of what seem like avoidable mistakes. Then again in a world that seems to be making increasingly chilling assumptions, and formalizing them, regarding people’s behavior, I’m more and more protective of the idea that allowing for mistakes (and admitting to them) might be evidence of wisdom and personal freedom. Juanita: Do you still struggle with any of the cultural aspects of living in Greece? Adrianne: All the time. But after almost 20 years, things like a driver stopping in the middle of a busy street (and blocking traffic) to say hello to a friend he’s just recognized passing on the sidewalk, don’t surprise me anymore. Juanita: How would you describe “the real Greece” to someone? Adrianne: The ‘real Greece’?! I wouldn’t dare. I’m sure the Gods of Olympus would find some unique form of retribution if a mere mortal were to try such a thing… Juanita: Adrianne, what are you ultimately trying to convey with your memoir “Broken Greek: a language to belong”? Adrianne: I think the book tries to express what I’d call the mosaic of what’s become modern Greece, this hybridity of the old and new that often clashes, but at the same time is fascinating. It’s also a very personal book about my effort to come to terms with disparate worlds, and even time periods. I mean the ‘Greece of my childhood and grandparents’ has very little to do with the ‘Greece of modern day Athens’, and yet I wanted to find a way to bring those differences together without suggesting that any one part, or experience, was more important, or ‘real’, than another. Juanita: I understand that you have a significant writing career. Would you tell us about your writing history? Adrianne: I don’t know if I’d call it ‘significant’ in that there’s always so much more one could do and say. I think it’s been idiosyncratic. I started writing fiction in graduate school, then moved to Greece and found myself writing poems, and then did a doctorate because I thought that would make me more employable, and discovered I really enjoyed the research, and then found myself working on what became Broken Greek. Juanita: How can readers find out more about you and your endeavors? Adrianne: I’d like to think my most interesting self is in my writing (I have some work up on www.adriannekalfopoulou.com) E.L. Doctorow once told us when I was a student of his in the NYU Graduate Writing Program that most writers try to become conduits for their work. You just hope becoming a conduit doesn’t make you a casualty! Juanita: Adrianne, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. “Broken Greek” is an honest and enlightening memoir, and a truly new way to understand the Greek culture. Do you have any last thoughts for your readers? Adrianne: When the 2004 Olympics were being hosted in Athens there was this amazing transformation of the city that no one expected. There were jokes that kept going around about whether or not things were going to be ready in time. One joke was about a bunch of workers being asked when the main stadium would be completed. The workers want to know the latest possible date it needs to be done by. The answer is ‘Sunday’. So the workers ask, ‘morning or afternoon?’ The reality is the Olympics were a tremendous success but it cost the country huge amounts and of course a lot of the publicity for it was sabotaged because of the current hysteria in the world regarding security. The fact of the matter was the games went smoothly and everyone had a great time, despite those fears, and despite the expenses, which says something about the culture. A friend summed it up perfectly when she compared the 2004 Olympics to ‘a lavish wedding that costs all your savings but you happily pay, even if you can’t afford it.’ Listen to interview on Inside Scoop Live |
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