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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN January 16, 2005 Issue 
Middlesex By Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002 
Greek Mythology Comes to Life In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus is the son of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. Salmacis, a nymph, became so besotted with love for the beautiful boy that she prayed for "the twain to become one flesh." The gods answered her prayers and the two became one. Thus, a hermaphrodite is a person, a plant or an animal that has both, male and female sex organs. This is due to a rare combination of chromosomes the causes of which continue to be a mystery to the medical community. "Middlesex," the 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides is the life story of a hermaphrodite. The over 500-page novel is also the saga of a family of Greek immigrants and a partial chronicle of the turbulent 1960s. The saga begins with sister and brother Desdemona and Eleutherios (Lefty) Stephanides in 1922 in a Greek village not far from Bursa, the old capital of the Ottoman Empire. The story unfolds on the backdrop of historical events, which, under the guise of political correctness, Americans continue to refuse to confront. In September 1922, with their customary savagery, the Turks burned to the ground the lovely Greek city of Smyrna and slaughtered all of its Orthodox Christian population that consisted predominantly of Greeks, Armenians and some Bulgarians. Later, in its place rose the Turkish city of Izmir. But this story has to do with the Greek population of Turkey in the vicinity of the city and the consequences of Turkish brutality. Desdemona and Lefty, both in the flower of their youth, live together in their tiny village where most of the people have practiced intermarriage for ages. Since the death of their parents Desdemona has kept house for her brother and tended to the family's silk worms so that Lefty can pursue an education. Subconsciously their physical proximity and fraternal love develops into carnal love. In the mayhem following the burning of Smyrna and their perilous escape to America, they decide to marry each other. The only person in America who knows them as brother and sister is their cousin Sourmelina (Lina). But their secret is safe with Lina, as they too know a secret about her. By the time Desdemona and Lefty discover that there is not only a religious reason but also a medical reason against intermarriage, they have prospered in America and have had two children. Desdemona agonizes about their offspring but Lefty remains oblivious to her worries. They continue to prosper and their children grow up into adults without any genetic problems. Anticipating an anomaly, Desdemona tries desperately to thwart the love between her son and his cousin Tessie, Sourmelina's daughter. But their first child, a boy is normal. Their second child, a girl they name Calliope (Callie) also appears to be normal; that is, until she reaches puberty when manifestations of her/his dual sex begin to surface. Most of the book deals with the agony of Callie's slow discovery that she is a hermaphrodite and her transition from a girl into a boy. The book also contains numerous medical explanations about hermaphrodites and attributes Callie's wild dual sex chromosome to intermarriage. But "Middlesex" is also about other things. The Stephanides family gets caught in the Detroit riots of the 1960s, Callie's brother becomes swept by the ideas of the 1960s and Callie herself briefly becomes a part of the San Francisco counterculture of the early 1970s. These pivotal historical events come to life in "Middlesex." Desdemona and Lefty settle in Detroit, one of the cities densely populated with Balkan and East European immigrants who came to America at the turn of the century to work as unskilled laborers in America's industrial cities. This book provides a detailed picture of the life of Greek immigrants and the prejudices they suffered before ethnic diversity became accepted. Now we can add "Middlesex" as a valuable document of Greek-American life to that of the over-the-top movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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