“In their ethnicity, their Greekness, they transcend culture, obliterate boundaries with specificity and power. Shocking in their simplicity and unpretentiousness, they speak to us directly, like the diary of a lost relative.”
The Salt Lake Tribune
“She carries literary dexterity and grace to its ultimate…Being rooted in her people, she is able to probe deeply into their personal experiences and foibles, with compassion and understanding.”
The Greek American
“Papanikolas is lovingly precise in her descriptions of clothing, hair styles, photographs, jewelry, food, furniture and decor. These images appear much like variegated stones at the bottom of a clear stream. They dazzle, define, and anchor.”
The Deseret News, Salt Lake City
Helen Papanikolas has been honored frequently for her work in ethnic and labor history. Among her many publications are Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek Immigrants in Utah, Peoples of Utah (ed.), and her parents’ own story of migration, Emily-George. With Small Bird, Tell Me, she joins a long and ancient tradition of Greek story-tellers whose art informs and enriches our lives.
Helen Papanikolas was the author of several books of fiction and non-fiction, most recently the novel The Time of the Little Black Bird, winner of the Utah Book Award for Fiction. More info →
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Paperback
978-0-8040-0982-9
Retail price: $24.95,
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Release date: August 1994
208 pages
Rights: World
An Amulet of Greek Earth
Generations of Immigrant Folk Culture
By Helen Papanikolas
The boys and men who left their Greek valley and mountain villages in the early 1900s for America came with amulets their mothers had made for them. Some were miniature sacks attached to a necklace; more often they were merely a square of fabric enclosing the values of their lives: a piece of a holy book or a sliver of the True Cross representing their belief in Greek Orthodoxy; a thyme leaf denoting their wild terrain; a blue bead to ward off the Evil Eye; and a pinch of Greek earth.In
The Time of the Little Black Bird
By Helen Papanikolas
In 1906 a young, semiliterate Greek arrived in America with a fewdollars in his pocket and his people’s legacy of proverbs, superstitions, and cultural traits to guide him through the dangers and opportunities of a new world. The Time of the Little Black Bird begins with the story of this young man and his plan to build a future for his family as it makes its way in America.Told
The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree
Stories
By Helen Papanikolas
The title of Helen Papanikolas’ second collection of short stories, The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree, is taken from an old Greek proverb and speaks of the new generation’s struggle with the vestiges of Greek customs. Gone are the raw, overt emotions of the pioneers, their bold prejudices, and, especially, the haunting black fatalism of funerals. Yet their children retain much of their parents’ culture.
Fiction · American Literature · Literature · Western Americana
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