Artemis Leontis
The Greek Table

I write this essay at the kitchen table, my “companion in thought” (Ahmed 2024) from grade school to the present. My brother had a desk; I did not. I did my homework at the kitchen table. Despite having a beautiful desk now, I still choose to write here, near the sink and stove, a space central to women’s activities—food handling, childcare, family gathering—and to the lesson of silence my female ancestors learned when they stepped outside the kitchen space.

Raised more than half a century ago to excel in both homemaking and homework, I lead a double life in the kitchen. While I cook and bask in the company of the women who came before me, I confront the complexities and contradictions of this space: bright and dark, nurturing and isolating, creative and limiting, empowering and hierarchical. To love this place is not to avoid critique, but to engage it, examining closely and honestly, so as “to move against fear—against alienation and separation” (bell hooks 2000, 118).

Critique is the “voice of the other Greek America” (Anagnostou 2025) I learned at the kitchen table. I channel it here.

For decades, a small cadre of Greek American and Greek authorities with media access (journalists, TV producers, government officials, sociologists, lobbyists) has been casting Greek America as homogeneous, wholesome, and Hellenic: a “model ethnicity” built for success on hard work, respect for tradition, loyalty to family and religion, and moral excellence. Operating on fear, this dominant narrative is designed to appease authority and reward conformity. Crucially, it ignores the alienation and separation that is part of the “brutal bargain” of assimilation (Cannato 2015).

At the heart of this self-representation is the generic Greek table, symbolizing traditional gender roles—women’s nurturing labor and men’s commanding authority and virile ambition—and the unified family. A set of dishes and flavors signify Greek ethnicity. Women’s daily labor is glossed over, summed up in kitchen-tested recipes that can be standardized for mass preparation in church kitchens (men roast and grill, women bake) and sold as authentic ethnic cuisine at revenue-generating Greek festivals. Standardizing “the Greek table” is one of the keys to Greek America’s success narrative—a scalable, packageable product (see Kochilas 2018).

My table is not generic, however; nor is it a symbol, or even a set of recipes I wish to reproduce. My hortopita, rightfully beloved among family and friends, is a dish that earns every bit of its praise. May my grandchildren never toil away for hours making it! The kitchen table is “a culmination of a history of domestic labor that is often invisible” (Kustenfestivaldesarts 2024; Arapoglou and Patrona 2025). My critique seeks to make visible the exhaustion and even harsher experiences of Greek women who immigrated to the United States to keep house and reproduce.

Consider my own kitchen memories. I go back to a time when my brother, then a college student, came home for a proper meal. Lounging at the table without lifting a finger, oblivious to the clatter of dishes and hissing of pans, he looked up and offered an ill-timed quip: “Mom, you know you’re part of the system maintaining the status quo. Why don’t you ever fight oppression?” The dish she was serving landed in his lap. A precise flick of the wrist brilliantly delivered her silent protest against her unrecognized labor—an unappreciated (by him) gesture of critique against oppression. A senior in high school, I was beginning to grasp that he correctly named her participation in a system (though he would never have called it patriarchy), while failing to see his own expectation of being served as part of that very system.

Other conversations refuse to leave me: words about harsh realities spoken confidentially over a table from the 1960s to the present:

Domestic abuse; a woman’s dependent immigration status, absence of legal, social, and financial protections:

[A woman—a recent immigrant with an infant child—shows up at our kitchen door with a black eye and bruises. She does not know English and does not have immigration papers apart from her husband’s. She is desperate and asks for temporary shelter.](Female aged 19)

Intra-community exploitation, home-based skilled labor:

The church invited my husband to bring his family from Greece and serve as the chanter. When we arrived he learned that they didn’t have the money to pay him enough for us to live. I was a modistra [seamstress] in Greece and took up sewing at home at the kitchen table with the children at my feet to supplement his income. (Female in her 70s, recalling her family’s immigration 50 years prior)

Family breakdown and a legal system stacked against maternal rights:

I know I left my husband for another man. He has a powerful lawyer and is going to get custody of the children. No one in the community defends me. (Female in her 40s)

Addiction:

It’s a very bad addiction. Alcohol. Crack-cocaine. Both sons. Rehab is very expensive and usually fails. (Female in her 50s)

Community barriers:

I wanted to feel comfortable in the Greek church, I was longing for spiritual connection. But my clothes, posture, gestures, hair, and musical taste were all wrong. And my parents attended a different church. I always felt like the church didn’t want me. (Female in her 60s, recalling events in the 1970s and 1980s)

Why can’t I be part of the community without having to attend church? (Female in her 40s)

Marginalization of LGBTQ partnerships, disenfranchisement of their grief:

I love her. We were partners. Why couldn’t I be present with the family at the funeral? (Female in her 50s grieving the death of a female who had never revealed the relationship)

Xenophobia, accent discrimination:

My colleagues at work, who are less educated, treat me with disrespect because I have a Greek accent. They assume I’m not smart. They don’t reward me for equal if not better work. It’s very offensive. (Female in her 40s, 2000s)

Embarrassment of failed studies, terror of expired visa:

I stopped doing my PhD work in math because my advisor was ignoring me. Are you shocked? I’m not who you think I am. My visa has expired. I can no longer stay in this country and don’t know what to do next. (Female in her 20s)

Erasure of Greek American creatives:

Greek American poets? Wow! Really? They exist? I didn’t know you could be a Greek American poet / writer / composer / artist. (Multiple subjects responding to a gift of Greek American poetry, fiction, music, or art)

Vulnerabilities of aging, lack of financial independence:

Now that he has dementia, I’ve gained access to his retirement statements. He saved no money. (Female in her 70s)

Such conversations burn with rage, loss, and grief. They tell stories not reflected in any model narrative. What power does the kitchen offer to help? Is there nowhere else to turn?

Together, the stories cut across immigrant generations and social classes: Greek Americans and recent immigrants; homemakers, laborers, artists, students, professionals, teachers, rich and poor. I highlight the commonalities not to erase differences, but rather to give weight to the individuality of the experiences. Vulnerability to poverty, illness, exclusion, and loss is profoundly personal, shaped even more deeply by immigration, assimilation, cultural erasure, and struggles for missing dignity and joy.

The dominant narrative—a self-glorifying and simultaneously self-censoring account by select voices—presents Greek America as singular and successful. Beneath its polished surface, however, lies a drive to maintain respectability. Crucially, this narrative was never meant to address the alienation, separation, and sacrifices woven into immigration and assimilation.

Stories of pain, loss, and struggle do more than contradict the dominant account. They are acts of critique: questioning, exposing, and demanding a more honest reckoning with what it means to belong, work, and strive. Critique, however, is not only opposition; it offers a way forward. By surfacing unmet needs and invisible labor, these stories urge us to build real care and support. Storytelling becomes not just critique, but the first step toward community action, dignity, and belonging—a more inclusive, interconnected Greek America.

The future is waiting to be written. If we interweave the missing words of kitchen talk, we amplify unofficial voices that must be heard—not just “to move against fear—against alienation and separation”—but to care for those near and beyond us. “The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other” (hooks 2000, 118).

January 02, 2026

Artemis Leontis is C.P. Cavafy Professor and Director of the Modern Greek Program at the University of Michigan, where she teaches and researches Hellenism in modernity. Her books include Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (1995); Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins (2019); and “What These Ithakas Mean…”: Readings in Cavafy (2002). She edits the Journal of Modern Greek Studies and the “Greek/Modern Intersections” book series for University of Michigan Press.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. 2024. “Setting the Table, Some Reflections on Why Tables Matter.” Around the Kitchen Table Festivalorganized by Kunstenfestivaldesarts. 28 June. https://feministkilljoys.com/2024/06/28/setting-the-table-some-reflections-on-why-tables-matter/

Anagnostou, Yiorgos. 2025. “Voices of the Other Greek America.” Ergon: Greek/American & Diaspora Arts and Letters. 10 December. https://ergon.scienzine.com/article/essays/voices-of-the-other-greek-america

Arapoglou, Eleftheria, and Theodora Patrona, eds. 2025. “Unacknowledged Labor: Greek American Women’s Work and Lives.” Special section of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies vol. 43, no.2. October: 213–415.

Cannato, Vincent. 2015. “What Sets Italian Americans Off from Other Immigrants?” Humanitiesvol. 36, no. 1.January/February. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/januaryfebruary/feature/what-sets-italian-americans-other-immigrants

hooks, bell. 2000. All about Love: New Visions.William Morrow.

Kochilas, Diane. 2018. My Greek Table: Authentic Flavors and Modern Home Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours. St. Martin’s Griffin.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts. 2024. “Around the Kitchen Table: A Free School Podcast.” 26 June. https://kfda.be/en/news/around-the-kitchen-table-a-free-school-podcast/