Community, Care and Country: Conversations with Two Volumes of the Hellenism in the Heartland Series

John P. Psiharis, Working to Preserve Our Heritage: The Incredible Legacy of Greek-American Community Services (Hellenism in the Heartland). Volume 1 of Series. Chicago: Greek American Press, 2023. Pp. i + 482. Cloth $49.99.

John P. Psiharis, Breaking Ground: The Inside Story of Chicago’s Greek Nursing Home Movement (Hellenism in the Heartland). Volume 2 of Series. Chicago: Greek American Press, 2024. Pp. i + 276. Cloth $39.99.

This review essay attempts to initiate a dialogue with Greek American ideals and practices regarding care for the elderly to spark a broader conversation about the ways Greek Americans imagine Greek identity and culture in Greece. This angle encourages readers to engage in a deeper discussion about aspects of Hellenism that are often overlooked due to the discomfort they evoke—requiring self-critique, introspection, and the recognition of cultural flaws. At the same time, it challenges us to reconsider certain features that we frequently boast about, calling for greater humility. In this essay, I am setting aside the way I typically conform to academic principles as well as my academic writing style to engage in a non-conformist conversation with Hellenism in the Heartland, volumes 1 and 2.

Functioning effectively as a textual treasure trove of memory and community, the Hellenism in the Heartland series has thus far produced two volumes. Published independently by John P. Psiharis, both books feature a compilation of historical research and archival materials, including invitations to fundraisers and social events, event programs, photographs, and memoranda, as well as personal accounts. Psiharis writes that he was inspired to publish these volumes after encountering decaying old photos that reminded him of his role in establishing Chicago’s Greek Nursing Home Movement, a twenty-year community effort that began in 1982 to create a nursing home for Greek Americans in Chicago. The volumes also feature visual representations of the movement’s development as well as of the evolving community dynamics.

Compiling nearly 800 pages of such mundane, yet significant, community materials into two volumes seems like a monumental task of encyclopaedic and archival value. The author is clear about his purpose of capturing this history: he aims to record it for posterity and to highlight the legacy of this endeavour. He is also sincere in his gratitude for a fellow “co-journer,” Dr. Elaine Thomopoulos, who is praised for her substantial involvement in shaping this book, a four-decade-long project. I use the term co-journer here to emphasize the near-spiritual nature of their shared journey, a term I find particularly fitting for their collaboration. Indeed, one must be a true believer in such a project to persist until its fruition, recognizing the value of keepsakes and the importance of collecting photos, paperwork, memoranda, invitations, letters, and countless minutes from committee meetings to preserve them. It is such material that enriches Psiharis’s work.

The two volumes are similarly structured to tell the story of the establishment of Chicago’s Greek Nursing Home Movement. They compile archival sources related to community events, fundraising efforts, and other important details. Data sources include meeting minutes, patriotic speeches, excerpts from Greek American newspapers, and essays written by Psiharis and other Greek Americans. These materials cover everything from the inception of the idea to create a Greek nursing home to its funding and, finally, to the realization of the movement. This content is then followed by a list of key contributors to the project (members of its board of directors, the advisory board, and certain special supporters) with mini biographies detailing their roles and contributions. This is augmented by historical and descriptive materials of the movement’s work, the challenges faced, the spirit of resilience and persistence of its protagonists, and some emotive snippets, such as the story of Efthimios Vlahos, a ninety-five-year-old man anticipating his move to the Greek American Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.

While there is a great deal of name-dropping in the volumes—letters from Michael Dukakis and other politicians, as well as many wealthy Americans and Greek Americans—it is accompanied by vignettes that capture formal letters and/or photos of the respective politicians and benefactors. Additionally, there are numerous photographs of celebrations and fundraising dinners. Again, all of this is focused on turning the dream of Greek-American Community Services into a tangible reality—one that would come to offer a wide range of social services to Chicago’s Greek-American elderly, turning the dream from an ideal into one in the form of bricks and mortar. Finally, while functioning almost like an amulet, the foreword of Hellenism in the Heartland is followed by a single page showcasing two important words in the Greek vocabulary: “Philotimo” and “Philoxenia.” Entries from the Greek City Times and the Greek Reporter unpack the words’ meanings, symbolism, and practice, linking them to the core arguments that drove the campaign to establish the Greek-American Community Services for the first generation of Chicago’s Greek migrants who had by this time actualized the “American” dream and were now senior citizens.

Archiving the history of the movement as Psiharis has done is an important contribution. However, the complex intersections of “ancestral homeland” and “host land,” alongside the experiences of migrants as social agents navigating various existential paths, invite scholars to engage in a more profound sociological exploration of cultural integration. Ethnographic research on the Greek American diaspora can quickly become overwhelming due to large quantities of data, making it difficult for researchers to untangle the dreams and struggles embedded in the narratives of community, country, and care (Christou, 2006; 2013; 2016a; 2018). Moreover, the concept of “home” and the ethnocultural symbols that provide a sense of comfort, such as Greek food, music, language, and traditions, become even more pronounced in older age when frailty often evokes fear and a longing for familiarity (Christou, 2016b).

Nevertheless, it is this sense of familiarity and the longing for “sameness” that defines ethnic groups, and most Greeks are no different given their connection with the ancestral homeland. While not unique to Greeks, what remains a work-in-progress is for Greeks to redirect their preoccupation with idealizations toward the acknowledgement of faults and mistakes. This requires a humble willingness to take responsibility, admit one’s mistakes, and recognize that there is always room for growth. Therefore, in the current age of austerity, alienation, isolation, and loneliness, care and caring no longer reflect “Greekness” in Greece in regard to solidarity and support, as Psiharis argues. Instead, the experience of care and caring must be understood within the context of socio-economic as well as class discrepancies and opportunities. More specifically, while wealth can indeed contribute to adequate care, genuine care is not always the result of financial ability to provide. Thus, financial means should not lead us to generalize about the absence of care in all situations. Close family ties, whether they are the result of genuine respect for others or a matter of normative, social, or moral guilt related to not wanting to be perceived as abandoning frail and elderly parents make elder care essential for all people, and not just Greeks or Greek Americans. Moreover, the necessity of family provision of elder care in Greece is compounded by the absence of formal social protections and a robust welfare system, thereby leading to the privatization of elder-care services in both the formal and informal economy.

In this context, to argue that Greek Americans are emulating the ancestral homeland is misleading since social practices in Greece have been deeply transformed due to financial and social crises. Societal changes have been intensified by generational shifts in the social geographies of neoliberal lives that are in contrast to the more relaxed lifestyle of earlier times. Regardless of one’s wealth or privilege, the Greek motto “δεν βαριέσαι” (never mind) was once the answer to procrastination, emphasizing the importance of living well each day.

Another significant factor to consider in relation to care is gender. In Greece gender imbalance has been prevalent, with women tending to be the primary caregivers, shouldering the bulk of the responsibility for elderly parent care, often while juggling employment and childcare. In addition to gender, the historic cultural value of family support for “aging in place,” with its reliance on family care, should also be considered within the context of rural disparities, demographic challenges, and a rapidly aging population. Thus, community-based interventions, such as the Greek American example that Psiharis reports on, are likely limited and fall short of the innovative approaches seen in other Western European and Scandinavian countries, such as the Active and Assisted Living Joint Programme and the European Innovation Partnership for Active and Healthy Ageing, which integrate health and social care while promoting social transformation. These projects show how a combination of cutting-edge robotics technology and mobile digital devices can help older citizens lead happy, full, and truly independent lives, as well as provide economic opportunities to facilitate the growth of a viable “Silver Economy” (see, for example, “Independent Living in an Ageing Society Through Innovative ICT Solutions”).

Finally, I would argue that the dynamics of elder care and the relationship between social support and health-related quality of life indicators are inextricably linked (Xiarchi et al. 2024; Sarla et al. 2020) and are critical issues that must be explored if we are to understand how community services are shaped and to what extent ethnic values influence the quality of provision. Indeed, authors writing about care must reflect on context-specific societal and cultural dynamics in relation to aging and caring. While important, such reflections and questions about societal and cultural dynamics are not a core component of Psiharis’s two volumes.

Given this fact, I would invite the author, should he wish to enhance his Hellenism in the Heartland series, to consider combining his collection of memorabilia and descriptive accounts about this successful movement with a deeper exploration of the social parameters surrounding it. Had this approach been undertaken, I believe the two volumes would have been even more compelling for readers like me. Thus, I offer below a few themes that I wish had been explored in the volumes:

• Are there any gender-driven stories that could have been shared with readers about this cultural experiment? For example, is ethnic aging—the process and experience of aging across different ethnic groups—experienced differently by Greek American women versus Greek American men?
• Are there differences in how aging and care are dealt with by the first, second, and/or subsequent generations of Greek Americans?
• Are there defined boundaries between ethnic groups for generational expectations, and are these boundaries shaped solely by “cultural values?” If so, what are these values in the United States and Greece in 2025?
• Are there class or other social categories, such as regional origin, education, disability, religiosity, and heteronormativity that have served as key criteria to shape community experiences in the case studies showcased by Psiharis?

To put all this differently, how can we shift from merely compiling archival notes and historical information as a repository, having our publications serve as a hardcover container for boxes of photos, documents, and other papers, to creating a more reflective narrative—in this case of Chicago’s Greek Nursing Home Movement experiment? Such a narrative would encompass the stories as well as the contested and emotional histories tied to selective processes of memory. Such a narrative would also provide a story of the community’s experiences, enriching its understanding, and serving as a legacy for subsequent generations. It would serve as a major contribution, a lasting impact on Hellenism—by confronting and naming not just the good but also the bad, owning both, and transforming our dysfunctionalities.

In closing, my hope is that the next volumes of this series will take a Socratic dive into the abyss of Hellenisms—the Hellenisms that are beyond our comfort zone, exploring the unknown marginal spaces of failure and catastrophe. Doing so would serve as a poignant reminder that true growth requires a careful examination of all that shines on the surface but also focuses on the many cracks that lie beneath the surface.

Anastasia Christou

Middlesex University

April 26, 2025

Anastasia Christou is Professor of Sociology and Social Justice at Middlesex University London, Senior Fellow Higher Education Academy, academic activist, trade unionist, feminist, anti-fascist, anti-racist. An interdisciplinary critical scholar whose work is fully immersed in the humanities, social sciences, the arts in the pursuit of a public sociology which is relevant, meaningful, transformative, Anastasia extensively researches, publishes, teaches on issues of identity, emotion, inequality, intersectionality, ethics, decoloniality, feminist pedagogies, social justice exclusions regarding gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity in migrant, minority, youth, ageing groups, having engaged in multi-sited, multi-method, comparative ethnographic research in the US, UK, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, France, Iceland, Switzerland; collaborative research in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and with communities in Palestine/Israel. Anastasia engages in voluntary work transnationally with such NGOs as Cara (the Council of At-Risk Academics). As a writer and editor Anastasia works across disciplines, geographies, cultures, conducting empirical field research and critically theorising from her findings while also publishing poetry. Anastasia’s research has been published with University presses (Harvard University Press; Amsterdam University Press), many international journals, and edited a number of book volumes, special issues. Anastasia is editor-in-chief of the journals GeoHumanities of the American Association of Geographers and the Journal of Further and Higher Education. For a narrative snapshot see: https://cara-syria.org/stories/psyche/

Works Cited

Christou, Anastasia. 2006. “American Dreams and European Nightmares: Experiences and Polemics of Second-Generation Greek-American Returning Migrants.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32 (5): 831–45. doi: 10.1080/13691830600704263.

Christou, Anastasia. 2013. “Ageing in the Ancestral Homeland: Ethnobiographical Reflections on Return Migration in Later Life.” In Return Migration in Later Life, edited by John Percival, 179–93. Bristol: Policy Press.

Christou, Anastasia. 2016a. “Ageing Masculinities and the Nation: Disrupting Boundaries of Sexualities, Mobilities and Identities.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 23 (6): 801–16. DOI:10.1080/0966369X.2015.1058760.

Christou, Anastasia. 2016b. “Ageing 'Phantasmagorically' in Exile: The Resilience of Unbearable and Unattainable Homelands in the Jewish and Cuban Imagination.” In Re-thinking Home: Transnational Migration and Older Age, edited by Katie Walsh and Lena Näre. Oxford: Routledge.

Christou, Anastasia. 2018. “Ageing Across Austere Space and Time: Critical Insights on Social Crises.” International Network for Critical Gerontology. https://criticalgerontology.com/ageing-austere-critical-insights/.

Sarla, Efstathia, Ekaterini Lambrinou, Petros Galanis, Athena Kalokairinou, and Panayota Sourtzi. 2020. “Factors That Influence the Relationship Between Social Support and Health-Related Quality of Life of Older People Living in the Community.” Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, 6. doi:10.1177/2333721420911474.

Xiarchi, Lambrini Maria, Kristina Nässén, Lina Palmér, Fiona Cowdell, and Elisabeth Lindberg. 2024. “Unveiling the Dynamics of Older Person Care: A Qualitative Exploration of the Intersection Between Formal and Informal Caregiving from the Perspectives of Registered Nurses in Greece.” BMC Health Services Research, 24 (966). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11401-5.