what does it mean to have lived ‘successfully’?
In search of a better life, the 1950s and 1960s saw a large wave of Greek immigration to Canada. As the granddaughter of Angelo and Vasiliki, who were amongst those making such a journey, my journey into my grandfather’s story begins as his memory starts to fade. I seek to capture his story, and instead find it intermingled with my own as I face the questions of what a good life means in my own post-graduation context. This graphic novel auto-ethnography weaves in and out of personal memoir, family history, and anthropological questions of work, as a “successful life” is one that follows a particular trajectory in my family yet is at the same time one that is bound – as all things are – to our sociocultural contexts.
How do we come to define our lives as meaningful and, ultimately, how can we look to this as a balm when watching a life reach its end? To the people who gave my life a future, as I lament here, “there is a thank you I don’t know how to begin saying”. This is my attempt to even begin saying it.
Meet Angeline Antonakos Boswell
about the author
Angeline Antonakos Boswell graduated with a degree in Anthropology from the University of Ottawa. She is currently the primary researcher for the Kingston Greek History Project (KGHP), a project affiliated with Queen’s University Archives, seeking to record and preserve the history of Kingston’s Greek community. Her work for the KGHP can be found here. Angeline now pursues a career in counselling, in it integrating all anthropological questions of health, wellness, and what it means to live meaningfully.
– January, 2020
Inheritance: An Intergenerational Story of Greek-Canadian Success 