Greek HERstory: Sharing Stories of Women Across Generations
- Despina Karatzias
- Sep 2, 2022
- 5 min read
Kαλώς ήρθατε • (kalós írthate) welcome. Born Despina Papathanasiou, I am a Greek Australian mother of three living in Melbourne. When I arrived in Australia aged nine, as soon as I was thrust into a classroom environment, not knowing a word of English, I knew I was in for some obstacles ahead. Having spent most of my childhood and teenage years suppressing my Hellenic origins, I never appreciated my Hellenic ancestral roots as much until my recent visit to Greece with my family. Within one day of traversing Athens in the sweltering heat, the museums, the Parthenon, the changing of the guards and the Panathenaic Stadium, a deep sense of pride in my Greek heritage overwhelmed and ignited my senses and curiosity about the Greek female spirit. In creating Greek HERstory, I hope to create a space to share stories of others navigating life through Greek-centred customs, values, philosophies, culture and philoxenia.
Avatar & avatar annotation
The image I have chosen as my avatar is a newly created logo for the Greek HERstory hub of storytelling. The key representation of the logo is an owl, representing wisdom and prudence. After visiting the Acropolis Museum, I learned the owl plays a significant role in Greek history after seeing one carved out of marble dating back to the 4th century BC in the Odeion of Perikles' ancient music hall. It was explained by our guide that a typical owl that belonged to the species of Athene noctua still inhabits the Acropolis and was used as support for a seat in the Odeion.
Narrating Personal Interest
I have spent most of my life having a vastly different lens on life than my non-Greek friends in my personal and professional life. Born in Melbourne, Australia, my family decided to leave home and head back to their homeland, Greece. Home for the next four and a half years was in a small village, Sisani, 172km West of Thessaloniki.
The memory of my first day in my grandmother's house is etched in my mind. Standing at the gate, lifting myself on tiptoes to see the village kids playing, the only word I understood was ‘Kangarootha’ as they pointed towards, of course, Greek for kangaroo.
My grandparents, my family of four and my aunty all called this two-bedroom village villa home. The adults of the house all worked on the family's broad bean farm while my sister and I left home. My grandfather, a sheep shepherd, was known in the village as ‘Captain’ and spent days away whilst at home the Sheppard, and some would argue the actual captain was my grandmother.
My own mother a stoic, outspoken, hard-working woman who had her work and financial independence stripped from her as soon as she joined the ‘family business’ gave my father an ultimatum. After four and a half years of living under the same roof as my grandmother she saw no future for her two girls, me, and my sister Maria. The ultimatum was to either move to a bigger village or back to Australia where we would have a better chance at gaining an education and improved living conditions.
My grandmother is also stoic, outspoken, hard-working and deeply attached to her only son Konstantinos. Now the ninety-year-old woman is still coming to terms with losing her son to a foreign land, Australia, that couldn’t be further from where she raised him in Sisani, Greece.
Returning to Australia with my family in 1987 now I had forgotten every last work of English and found myself thrust in an all-English speaking public school in Richmond, Victoria. The opposite of ‘kangarootha’ now I am the Greek kid that doesn’t know how to speak English that no one wants to play with.
Whether it is a Greek woman in a main city or village of Greece or a Greek woman who sacrificed leaving her family and everything she knew in the hope of a better life, there is a deep narrative of pain, perseverance and purpose, and that is the reason for telling the Greek HERstory of my own and of other women I have met and will meet along the way.
Introducing Your Topic
Who ignites and empowers you to do better, be better, live better? When do you think of your ancestral roots, which shaped your footprint and sense of who you are and want to be? And when you think of these people, what about their story left a lasting impression on you to give you a better understanding of self?
In a recent article by E. Patsalides (2022), when filmmaker Danielle Stamoulos was asked about her own Greek Australian experience, she gave an honest, relatable account that her Greek Australian experience always straddles the tension between inheriting the stories, fears, conservative traditions, and triumphs of her ancestors.
As described by E. Mavroudi (2022), it was after 1952 (until 1974) that over 250,000 Greeks and Greek Cypriots made their way to Australia (Tamis, 2005). At this time, most were male, uneducated and unskilled. From the 1960s onwards, more female Greeks arrived, and this so-called 'pioneer' generation aimed to settle permanently in Australia.
And pioneers they were; I was raised by one, my mother arriving alone at seventeen to live with her brothers and sisters-in-law until they made plans to marry her via arranged marriage to my father.
After recently watching the hit musical Hamilton in Melbourne, I was moved to embrace storytelling to carve out a legacy for my Hellenic sisters, elders, past, present and emerging around the world to tell their story. As someone who has spent her life looking externally for a strong, independent woman I look up to and admire, I have become acutely aware that the women and stories that inspire me just as much as Oprah or Michelle Obama are the women who raised me, the women who sacrificed and left their country, the women who said goodbye to their children not knowing when they will see them again.
As I delve deeper into my ancestral roots, I hope to cultivate through Greek HERstory is the ancestral story that lays within you to give you a better connection to your family history.
Dominated by the gods and male characters of Greek Mythology we will also, explore the most important females of ancient history time to shed light on who they were, what they did and what they stood for.
References:
Patsalides, E. (2022) Write what you know’: Danielle Stamoulos’ Greek heritage
inspires her creative works. The Greek Herald.
Mavroudi, E. (2020). Feeling Greek, speaking Greek? National identity and
language negotiation amongst the Greek diaspora in Australia, Volume 116, Pages 130-139 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.08.003
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