Representing Immigrants: A Review Essay
Vicky Giouroukakis, editor, Growing Up in an Immigrant Household and Community: Essays by Descendants of Immigrants. Dubuque, IA: Innovative Ink. N.D., 2024. Pp. xxxiii + 129.
Dean G. Calamaras, editor, The Baron of Second Avenue: Nicholas Calamaras and the Archive of the Greek-American League. Schodack Landing, NY, 2024. Pp. xi + 303.
George E. Danis, Go Far, Give Back, Live Greek: A Memoir. Herndon, VA: Amplify, 2024. Pp. 304.
by Taso G. Lagos
Three timely, engaging, and personal works addressing immigrants’ experiences in the United States appear at a noteworthy moment in the nation’s history, when the very nature of immigration itself is being severely tested, if not openly attacked. Collectively, these first-person accounts attest to the often idealized—and not always critically interrogated—legacy that immigration has bestowed on American society. They remind readers that behind each immigrant lie not one but many stories: some marked by determination, some touching, some cunning, some unexamined, and others strained or defeated by their own dreams or expectations. These complex stories are deeply American ones. Yet they also demonstrate that narratives of immigrant perseverance and success exist sometimes uncomfortably alongside less savory histories of unequal opportunity, exclusion, hostility and the selective memory that downplays their existence.
In the edited volume Growing Up in an Immigrant Household and Community, Vicky Giouroukakis asks readers to imagine the immigrant and diasporic experience as both personal and universal. Her volume recounts remembrances from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds beyond Greece, including Italy, Colombia, Jamaica, and Persian Jewish communities, among others. The unifying thread is experience itself, narrated through everyday events—birthdays, loving gestures by selfless grandparents, cooking, and reflections on what it means to be “Armenian,” as one chapter is titled. There is nothing inherently unique about the themes explored here that scholars of diaspora have overlooked; what distinguishes the volume is that these topics are conveyed directly by the recipients, descendants or beneficiaries of these experiences.
While the recollections and wistful memories—many passed down from first-generation migrants—sometimes dissolve into a fog of sentiment and scented nostalgia, offering limited insight into the fear and frustration experienced by the original immigrants, this does not diminish the value of the work itself. Rather, the first-person perspective humanizes selected memories, foregrounding some experiences while leaving others—often more hostile or fraught—less visible. In doing so, the volume reveals intergenerational bonds familiar to immigrant and non-immigrant families alike. Giouroukakis collected the stories from those submitted in response to her social media post.
Giouroukakis’s collection places at the center of the immigrant story those who fled their homelands for perceived opportunities in America, as well as their binational—and sometimes trinational—descendants who are at once products of immigrant households and the host society (and, at times, other ethnic communities). This transnational condition, which Giouroukakis labels “code-switching” (xxxi)— “to straddle two different linguistic worlds and be prepared to alternate languages when the situation [arises]” (xxxi)—emerges as both a burden and a celebration: a burden insofar as bilingual individuals often feel caught between two cultures, yet also a source of celebration, as they are enriched by more than one cultural tradition. Missing from the discussion, however, is whether this code-switching is gendered, and if so, in what ways. Given the predominantly female voices represented in the work, an opportunity may have been missed to contribute to this awareness. This should not be construed as a failing of the work, but rather something to consider if others are inspired to follow in the volume’s approach. Instead, the emphasis is on providing raw, authentic, unfiltered views of the immigration experience that attest to the vitality immigrants have brought—and continue to bring—to the American fabric, even as this affirmation sometimes comes at the expense of a lack of sustained engagement with racialized and institutional struggles.
The first-person reflections in Giouroukakis segue into a different first-person historical narration in Dean Calamaras’s The Baron of Second Avenue, a collection of archival material documenting the patronage, intervention, and ostensibly selfless advocacy undertaken by “Baron” Nicholas Calamaras. A tireless and seemingly benign intermediary, Calamaras emerges as a representative of one path in the immigrant experience in the United States. Though the archive is incomplete, the published materials offer a sufficiently coherent portrait of his activities and influence to theorize about his work. Like with the Giouroukakis volume, the Calamaras work was self-published, at their own time and expense, to disseminate the work. Their determination to tell immigrant history impresses, even if they were not specifically trained to do so.
The Baron’s base of operations was not a law firm or consular office, but a modest yet popular candy shop on Manhattan’s Second Avenue (hence the title of the book), from which he cultivated relationships with elected officials and prominent ethnic and civic leaders alike. In many respects, he functioned as an unofficial public servant, albeit without salary, staff, or formal authority. He deployed personal charm and strategic generosity—sending complimentary flowers and candy to officials—to lubricate reluctant bureaucracies into action.
Compiled by the “Baron’s” grandnephew, Dean Calamaras, the volume recovers an obscure figure whose story sheds partial light on the ways Greek Americans defended vulnerable immigrants in the early twentieth century. Unlike more prominent organizations such as the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), the Greek American League that Calamaras helped establish appears, based on available documents, to have been largely a one-man operation. Acting as a dove between two worlds, Calamaras mediated between the homeland carried in immigrants’ hearts and the host country confronted daily in American streets.
The book is not merely an account of the Baron’s efforts, but a record of the many individuals caught in desperate straits. From deportation cases and pleas for citizenship to legal interventions and psychiatric transfers, Calamaras and the Greek American League stood at the center of hardship. These stories underscore the precarity of immigrant life particularly when the assistance was not always equal or came with strings attached (a fate suffered by some immigrant Greeks known to this reviewer).
Accounts of immigrants helping immigrants are well trodden. Figures such as Alexander Pantages—who arrived in the United States as a teenager and later built a theater empire—also supported fellow Greeks, including members of his own family, often in exchange for loyal, low-wage labor. What, then, did the Baron gain from his selective patronage? Was his motivation purely altruistic, or was it shaped by business interests, community prestige, or personal influence? By the time Calamaras was active, Greek American communities already offered institutional support through churches, kafeneia, and informal networks that facilitated employment, housing, and social ties. He was neither alone nor singular in providing aid, and his example complicates—but does not overturn—narratives of immigrant vulnerability.
Questions about his motivation do not diminish the value of Calamaras’s interventions. His life illustrates what Giouroukakis’s contributors might call the disparate roles of being an immigrant: simultaneously businessman, advocate, family man, social climber, and American. Although the Baron often remained in the background, the voices of those he assisted sometimes speak powerfully in the archive. In other cases—particularly involving the institutionalized victim—the record falls silent, leaving unanswered questions about the moral struggle and emotional toll on him. While The Baron of Second Avenue does not offer sufficient material for a full biography, it succeeds in exposing immigrant assistance that operated outside formal institutions and by intermediaries whose influence reflected uneven distributions of power within Greek American communities.
Further discoveries could bring to light additional individuals who labored on the frontlines of immigrant care, revealing both the scope of help offered and the impetus behind it. Greek immigrants did not arrive in a vacuum; they encountered a landscape—both immigrant and non—shaped by benevolent, strategic, exploitative, even ambiguous forces of varying intentions and desires. Whether such behind-the-scenes efforts offer a fuller picture of immigration during periods of heightened hostility in the early 1900s remains an open question.
There is no shortage of material for George E. Danis’s provocative memoir, Go Far, Give Back, Live Greek. The book is, at once, a critique of contemporary American politics and a testament to the contributions of undocumented immigrants like Danis. His success—driven by extraordinary energy and determination—stands as compelling evidence of immigration’s transformative potential.
Working with ghostwriter Craig Borlase, Danis recounts a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Evia, a perilous postwar sea journey to the United States, and the support of kin and acquaintances who aided his early adjustment. He repaid that assistance through achievement in business, philanthropy, and political fundraising. Never forgetting the two lands that shaped him—Greece and the United States—Danis presents a life defined by dual belonging: one heart, two countries.
Danis extols hard work and perseverance while acknowledging the role of calculation and charm in his rise. Absent, however, is any reflection on how race, gender, and national origin shaped his opportunities within a deeply segregated society. For Danis and other white ethnics, American democracy—evoked through familiar Lincoln Memorial language in the book—offers immigrants an invitation to unleash entrepreneurial energy and accumulate wealth. That such claims in today's charged political environment provoke resistance makes the memoir especially timely.
His blunt aphorisms and earthy wisdom evoke the image of a grouchy yet endearing grandfather in a remote Greek village café, fortified by one glass of raki too many. Some policy proposals—such as a high-speed train linking Canada and South America—bear the mark of this café-table bravado. Yet here, innovation matters more than feasibility; it is the idea, rather than the train itself, that carries weight.
Danis’s memoir prompts sweetened nostalgia. It laments present political reality, as much as it extols the immigrant spirit. It also asks: if the United States can recover its commitment to tolerance and compassion toward immigrants, might individuals like Danis be remembered not only for business acumen or political influence, but for the ethical imagination they inspire? Particularly at a moment when democratic ideals feel especially fragile, such a legacy takes on renewed urgency.
Descendants of immigrants carry memories—often self-edited—of ancestors who fought to remain in the United States and labored to prove their belonging. Through imagination and effort, they helped fuel the nation’s economic growth. America’s rise was no accident; immigrants played a crucial role in it. The three works speak thoughtfully of immigrants’ contribution to their adopted land, even when not always appreciated. There is humanity, too, in their pages, beyond the narratives themselves, of folks who risked much, if not too much, for a chance at the American Dream. And what was their reward at the end? Some form of human dignity, perhaps, although that’s hard to quantify. As the country celebrates its 250th independence anniversary this year, immigration’s lessons are worth remembering.
April 17, 2026
Taso G. Lagos lectures in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of several books, including American Zeus: The Life and Times of Alexander Pantages, Theater Mogul (McFarland) and Cooking Greek/Becoming American (McFarland).