Greece, A Love Story, Women Write about the Greek Experience

New York.- By Vicki J. Yiannias
Camille Cusumaro, editor of Greece, A Love Story, published by Seal Press, writes in her introduction to the collection of stories about the Greek experience that she visited that “isle-perforated land of scintillating whites and impossible blues” for the first time in 1976. She “drank ouzo and retsina, ate the unforgettable cream of yogurts and wrapped her tongue around few Greek phrases,” and thought she had experienced the culture. But when she began working with the stories of this anthology she was carried back to Greece and her perception of the place was broadened.

For those who have been to Greece some of the personal travel essays in Greece, A Love Story are likely to do the same; those who plan to go can explore inside views of the magical charm and appeal of Greece, and some of its idiosyncratic characteristics, as well.

For many visitors, Greece is a place where their lives were changed, and where they awakened culturally. As well as being a sharing of firsthand experiences the womenʼs essays go beyond ordinary travelogue to capture the ways in which the country has shaped their lives or influenced decisions.

Greece, A Love Story is the winner of BATWʼs Best Travel Book for Planet Earth 2008, and Diane LeBowʼs story Dancing on the Wine Dark Sea also won Best Story/Essay in a Travel Related Anthology.

The Greek News was introduced to Greece, A Love Story, at the 2008 New York Times Travel Show by one on the writers included in the book, Colleen McGuire, an exhibitor at the show for her bicycle tour company called CycleGreece. McGuireʼs story, Siga Siga, Cycling in Greece, is about some of her cycling adventures in Greece, which provide her with “an unconventional lens through which to view the Greek people and culture. They also dramatize my love affair with this sacred land whose illustrious history and stupendous natural beauty humble me. Were it possible to designate an entire country a World Heritage site, I would nominate Greece,” writes McGuire, who is living out her dream in Greece.

Greece, A Love Story is also interesting from a historical standpoint. Be prepared to indulge in a little longing for the vanished or vanishing Greece or to rejoice in what you might feel are changes for the better. While some of the stories are accounts of recent trips others are about trips that took place decades ago such as Special Delivery, by Linda Hefferman, which contains classic references to Greece in 1960, so different in many ways from the EU Greece of today.

Different yes, and yet, the past as in Pamela Samek Stamatiouʼs essay A UFO in Greece, an old man she saw on a boat a couple of decades ago is a Homeric type still readily encountered: “Across the deck, an old man sat on a wooden stool. He took a tin cup from his bag and raised it to salute me before lowering it to the wind-chapped lips of his ruddy, whiskery face. I watched, mesmerized, and imagined him to be a thousand years old, right out of the ancient Greek stories,” and then, she continues, “As I thought, too, of perfectly sculptured men with names like Apollo and Eros, a boy with the head of Hermes, messenger of the gods, came and sat next to me.”

In her highly moving essay titled Adespotos, Ashley Black, who finds out that she is a Sarakatsan by birth adopted by Americans during the Greek Civil War tries to find her family among the nomadic Sarakatsan shepherds of Epirus. Alison Cadburyʼs The Folitsa, Sara Woosterʼs Dodge-Ems, Susan Tiburghiens Yeia sas!, and others also provide views of village life, with Linda Lappinʼs Fish Soup describing village life on Crete and Yeia sas!, containing references to wartime suffering.

Other writers in the collection are: Katherina Audley, Simone Butler, Amanda Castleman, Cynthia Greenberg, Tara Kolden, Sarah McCormic, Marilyn McFarlane, Liza Monroy, Davi Walders, and Ronna N. Welsh.

Camille Cusumaro told TGN that she had always wanted to go to Greece “where art became inseparable from life,” not just for the sybaritic beauty that I knew Iʼd find there but because being Sicilian on both sides, I knew that “her roots went back to Greece, too — as Sicily was part of Magna Graecia”.

Asked whether she sees similarities between Greece and Italy, Cusumano replied, “Absolutely, particularly between Greece and Sicily in particular, where my relatives still live… the music, food, the sound of the voice even though it’s a different tongue (although Sicilian still incorporates some Greek) the warmth and hospitality, and the no-nonsense appreciation for life in its most pared down simplicity.”

Does she have advice for first-time travelers to Greece? “Be sure to get out of Athens and see the islands — the smaller, less visited ones, for sure. Read books and literature on the country. A book like Greece, a Love Story would be a great companion because it reaches beyond the all-too-cliché travelogue and enhances anything the traveler might experience in Greece, with a lot of back-story. There must be nearly a hundred years of experience in the collection, all told, so you get a rounded view of the culture, its past, its light and dark sides.”

Camille Cusumano is the editor of Mexico, A Love Story; France, A Love Story; and Italy, A Love Story, all published by Seal Press. Seal Press is an Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, Inc.