Sweet Greeks: First-Generation Immigrant Confectioners in the Heartland by Ann Flesor Beck (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sweet Greeks: First-Generation Immigrant Confectioners in the Heartland by Ann Flesor Beck Steven J. Gold Sweet Greeks: First-Generation Immigrant Confectioners in the Heartland By Ann Flesor Beck (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020. Pp. ix, 303. Notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $125.00; paperbound, $27.95.) Sweet Greeks is a study of immigrants who entered the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and supported themselves by creating confectionary shops in small and medium-sized cities in southern Illinois. The book draws on and contributes to the extensive literature exploring the role of ethnic entrepreneurship in facilitating adaptation to the host society. The study is distinguished by its examination of a specific migrant population through a notably broad range of contexts, levels of analysis, and realms of experience. The book's unique contributions can be traced to its author, Ann Flesor Beck, who is both a scholar and a member of the group being studied. Beck worked in and (with her sister) currently runs the Candy Kitchen, a southern Illinois confectionary opened by her immigrant grandfather in 1904. These multiple bases of comprehension underlie the author's ability to assemble a rich and detailed assessment of the contexts that shaped the shop owners' emigration from Greece, arrival in the U.S., and maintenance of community in the American heartland. Beck describes the conditions in the homeland that drove young men to cross the Atlantic in pursuit of a new life, details their arrival on Ellis Island, and traces their settlement in small towns in Illinois. The book documents how recent arrivals labored to earn the money required to start a business. It explains how migrants, who were unaccustomed to candy and ice cream prior to their emigration, needed to learn new culinary skills from established co-ethnics. Drawing on her immersion in the community, the author traces subjects' life histories in considerable detail, illustrating their marital, business, religious, generational, and communal patterns. Broadening her level of analysis from the personal to social-structural, Beck examines migrants' confrontations with the discrimination and hostility commonly encountered by southern and eastern European migrants to the rural Midwest during the early twentieth century. Nativist Americans labelled Greeks as un-American because they maintained Greek schools, sent money back to the homeland, and retained their language and customs. Migrants sought to minimize their differences with locals by anglicizing their names, learning English, joining community organizations, [End Page 197] serving in the military, and emphasizing their Christianity. Despite such strategies, they found themselves subject to racist taunts, and were prevented from purchasing property in prestigious settings. Young men found themselves threatened for interacting with local women. Violent anti-Greek riots supported by law enforcement took place in Roanoke, Omaha, Kansas City, and Dayton. The greatest levels of hostility involved confrontations with the Ku Klux Klan, which was resurgent in the rural Midwest during the early twentieth century. Greek immigrants achieved a degree of success, however, in resisting the Klan by collaborating with an array of immigrant and minority groups and pro-immigrant politicians through the activities of the American Unity League. To sum up, Sweet Greeks is a significant and widely accessible contribution to our knowledge of a migrant community that found a pathway to survival in providing sweets that they had never tasted prior to their arrival in small mid-western towns. As is the case among many entrepreneurial migrants, Greek confectioners contributed to the culinary and social conditions of the locations in which they settled, supported themselves, and raised a second generation that largely abandoned their group's economic niche for other occupations, places of residence, and ways of life. Dealing with topics that are geographically close to and socially akin to those of Indiana, this volume should be of considerable value to readers interested in the history of Indiana. Steven J. Gold Michigan State University Copyright © 2023 Trustees of Indiana University