He Other Kind

9781885778031

1885778031

The fourteen stories in this collection are fictional stories of people who have immigrated into America since the beginning of the twentieth century & their offspring. The stories are not connected, & the heros are of various backgrounds & ages. Yet, the same reasons that bring other groups of immigrants have propelled these Greeks to America: poverty & the lure of "gold in the streets": the search for freedom, hope & adventure, political upheavals & war. The heros all have a past, & they never cut the umbilical cord binding them with the motherland. The dream of their return never materializes, but rather becomes a force to guide them through life's adversities. At the same time they are immersed in a "melting cauldron," a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society where everything good or everything evil goes. In the sequel, some find they have to pay a heavy price for their daring & adventure: they are exploited, victimized, sometimes by their own people, some try with indifferent success to retain something of themselves & their own, adhering to a hopeless pride & nebulous identity of Greekness; others attain most of their goals & find happiness. The stories are stories, they do not preach. They portray life as realistically as Greek-Americans lead it. They highlight the universal in Greek peculiarities. They emphasize that while the true melting pot may remain a dream, we find ourselves each passing day less & less different from our next door neighbor. Order from Seaburn, P.O. Box 2085, LIC, N.Y. 11102; Tel: 718-274-1300 FAX: 718-274-3353.