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| Saturday, December 10, 2005 |
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Austin Lunch - Greek-American Recollections
By george @ 11:53 PM :: 326 Views ::
0 Comments ::  :: Greek News
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Austin Lunch - Greek-American Recollections is a novel written by Southern California Greek author Constance Constant. Austin Lunch is a coming-to-America story about her family set during Depression-era in Chicago.
About Austin Lunch: In 1984, a trip to Greece and the ancestral home of Constance Constant’s mother yielded a home with little left standing after 50 years, but a bag full of letters hung undisturbed.
The letters were from Constant’s mother to her family in Greece after she’d left Greece for America in 1921 because her father had no dowry for her.
Thus began a 20-year writing odyssey to tell this tale of one Greek-American family, different, yet like so many other families in a time when stores and businesses all across the country closed due to the Great Depression and American families lived like nomads in public parks, huddled in doorways on cold nights – without money for food, let alone housing.
In this world, Vasiliki Limberopulos, Constant’s mother, moved her young family to cheaper quarters, put on a waitress’ uniform – unheard of at the time for a Greek wife – and began working with husband Paul in the Austin Lunch, a Chicago restaurant.
A “perceptive and moving account, reading almost like a novel … Constant … knows how to tell a good story,” according to Efthalia Walsh, author of “Beloved Sister.”
About the author: Born in 1939 Chicago to Greek immigrants, Constance (Connie) Constant didn’t begin to understand until the 1980s what an extraordinary life her ordinary family had lived coming to a country so different from the “Old Country” and surviving the Great Depression, hanging onto their restaurant at the edge of Skid Row. When she realized what was going to be lost, she began writing about the family and their times, drawing on memories of her brother and sister, in what turned into a 20-year exploration.
Previously, Constant brought Homer’s ancient Greek classics to students in seven Palos Verdes, California, schools after teaching for nine years in Skokie, Illinois. She also served on the arts commission for the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Constant lives in Ranchos Palos Verdes with her husband, Bob, and currently is working on a book about an American family trapped in Greece during the German occupation in World War II.
Reviews: “It is the quintessential American story, and it is one of the reasons why we Greek-Americans are so proud of who we are and where we came from.” - Michael Dukakis, former Governor of Massachusetts and the 1988 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Presidency, on Austin Lunch
For more information contact Maria Fotopoulos or to purchase Austin Lunch visit Cosmos Publishing |
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