D.K.Toteras, Young Greeks Learn to Speak English in a San Francisco Elementary School; Bitter Tears

Another short extract from Bitter Tears (the chapter entitled The Drunken King), the great Corfiot-American writer D. K. Toteras remembers his school days at a San Francisco Elementary School:

"It was Show and Tell time at the Elementary School. It was an event that was more an act of imagination than the explanation of anything. It was painful to find something and then to Tell about it in a foreign language. We had to make up stories in our broken English about junk that our mothers had lying around the house. Anything would do, as long as we said our stories in English. The teacher would put on a big broad smile.

All the Greeks who lived south of Market sent their children to the same school and Greek was becoming the language of the school yard, but English had to be spoken in the classroom. There was no reprieve. There was no excuse. You could not ask God for help when the teacher caught you speaking "gibberish."

…There was no fooling around. If you were caught speaking Greek the doors of hell opened. For every Greek word, you got to wear a dunce’s hat and your nose was stuck deep into a circle she drew on the blackboard. As far as she was concerned you were going to learn English or you would be humiliated until your existence turned into a glob of flesh deep under her desk, for the ultimate disobedience. Twice at the blackboard got you a trip under her desk. The rules were precise and exact. There was no appeal. The class would become excited seeing one of their own shoved under the desk for the afternoon for being caught talking Greek with another Greek.

Fear of humiliation turned many of us into docile little lambies. Greek, the Language of Philosophy, turned into the language of terror. Here is how the rules were:

One word got you a stern warning; two warnings, dunce’s hat, with circle drawn two inches higher than your nose, so you would have to stand on your toes to reach it.

If the dunce’s hat didn't do it for you, it was under the desk. The class would get excited when an example had to be made. They didn't want any part of it, and it would help the teacher to break down the language barrier.

"Do you understand?" she would yell, "You have to be stupid to want to put on the dunce’s hat or sit under my desk."

"Yes, teacher", the class would respond.

"Only English in this class- is that understood?"

"Yes, teacher." 

Under the desk was reserved for my new friend E.

His stubbornness was total. He only did what he thought he should do. The more you punished him, the stronger he became. He didn't fight the punishment, he fought the order.

"He is Cretan," my father said, "and it is peculiar to the Cretans to accept punishment as a sign of their strength."

He didn't seem to care. He would tell the teacher that Greek had existed long before her language ever came into existence, that her people lived in caves when Greeks studied philosophy. She didn't care what we said as long as we said it in English. Her job was to make sure we learned. It was plain and simple and it was always the same".


Demetrius K. Toteras ©2012
posted with permission of  Nine Muses Press, Occidental, California,
and ©2012, the Estate of D. K. Toteras.

I hope that by posting some sample sections, publishers, academics and interested readers will call for Bitter Tears and other important works by Toteras to be published, at long last.


D. K. Toteras fought in the Korean War, having signed up under-age. He was captured and became a prisoner-of-war. He died in California on Thursday 12 November, 2009.


See also:

Greek-Town, San Francisco, World War II; The World Shuddered, Demetrius K. Toteras (from Bitter Tears); A Great Greek Writer

D. K. Toteras, A Twenty-Year-Old Letter on the Meaning of Hellenism and On Being a Corfiot Mandoukiotis


Interested publishers are invited to make contact, to explore publication possibilities with the copyright holder.

All enquiries: Nine Muses Press, P.O. Box 1138, Occidental, California 95465