Themes Call Me Athena Colby Cedar Smith

The Immigrant Experience in Call Me Athena

Introduction

In Call Me Athena, Colby Cedar Smith weaves a narrative that centers the immigrant experience as a crucible of loss, resilience, and identity. The novel’s thematic claim is that immigration is not a single event but an ongoing negotiation between heritage and survival, hope and grief. Set against the backdrop of 1930s Detroit during the Great Depression, the story follows Mary Skandalaris, the daughter of Greek and French immigrants, as she navigates poverty, cultural expectations, and her own dreams. This analysis traces the theme across three key plot elements, ties it to characters and symbols, and examines its complexity.

Defining the Thematic Claim

The immigrant experience in Call Me Athena is defined by the tension between the past and the present. The past—homeland, language, traditions—provides identity but also haunts characters with loss. The present—Detroit’s factories, tenements, and discrimination—demands adaptation and sacrifice. Smith’s portrayal emphasizes that immigrants and their children must constantly renegotiate who they are, often carrying grief beneath their resilience. This claim emerges from the author’s note, where she explains reconstructing her great-grandparents’ journeys from Greece and France, and from Mary’s opening metaphor of grief as a brush fire.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

1. Mary’s Brush Fire Metaphor: Grief and Loss

The very first chapter of Call Me Athena introduces the theme through a powerful symbol: grief as a brush fire. Mary reflects, “Grief / consumes / like a brush fire. / It begins / with a glowing cinder.” She tries to smother the spark, but it spreads, “chang[ing] everything / in its path. / All you can do / is stand there. / With a useless / bucket in your hands. / As you watch / the entire field / burn.” This metaphor directly links to the immigrant experience. The brush fire represents the cumulative losses immigrants face: leaving behind family, home, language, and identity. Mary, as a second-generation immigrant, inherits this grief from her parents, Giorgos and Jeanne, who left Greece and France in search of a better life. The “useless bucket” symbolizes the helplessness that often accompanies this loss—a feeling that no amount of hard work can fully extinguish the longing for a past that no longer exists.

2. The RMS Olympic Manifest: Hope and Memory

In the Author’s Note, Smith reveals a key historical document: the manifest from the RMS Olympic, the sister ship to the Titanic. Her great-grandparents are listed as numbers six and seven. This manifest is not just a record of passage; it symbolizes the hope and risk of immigration. Smith notes that her own first name, Colby, appears on the manifest in the porter’s handwriting, which she felt was a sign she was meant to write the story. In the novel, this artifact bridges generations. For Mary, the ship represents her parents’ difficult journey and the dreams they carried. Yet the manifest also holds contradiction: it is a bureaucratic document that reduces human stories to a list, yet it is also a tangible link to ancestry. This duality underscores the immigrant experience: it is both a personal saga and a statistical pattern, both treasured memory and official record.

3. Mary’s Struggle for Independence in Detroit

Although the supplied evidence does not include chapters detailing Mary’s later life, the author’s note and internal links point to her fight for independence in 1930s Detroit. Smith writes that her grandmother Mary “became a successful businesswoman in the 1950s” and “had to fight for her independence.” The context of the Great Depression in Detroit—a city of factories, poverty, and ethnic enclaves like Greektown—shapes Mary’s experience. As the daughter of immigrants, Mary faces pressure to conform to traditional roles, yet she also absorbs her parents’ resilience. Her desire to become an “elevator girl” for Henry Ford (noted in the author’s note) represents a step into the American workforce, a path that challenges both gender norms and ethnic stereotypes. This plot point ties directly to the immigrant experience: the next generation must carve out a new identity while honoring—or breaking from—the sacrifices of their parents.

Character and Symbol Connections

Characters

  • Mary Skandalaris: The protagonist embodies the second-generation immigrant perspective. She is caught between her Greek father’s and French mother’s expectations and her own ambitions. Her grief, shown in the brush fire poem, reflects the weight of her parents’ untold stories and her own search for belonging.
  • Mary’s father (Greek immigrant) and Mary’s mother (French immigrant): Their journeys from Greece and France are based on Smith’s great-grandparents. Their experiences—leaving home, crossing the Atlantic on the RMS Olympic, and building a life in Detroit—represent the sacrifices that enable Mary’s future. However, their stories are also marked by struggle, poverty, and cultural clash.
  • Giorgos Skandalaris and Jeanne Skandalaris: These are the names of Smith’s great-grandparents in the novel. They embody the hope and hardship of first-generation immigrants. Their marriage itself is a union of two cultures, which complicates Mary’s identity further.
  • Mary’s twin sister: Though evidence for her role is limited, the existence of a twin suggests a doubling of perspective—perhaps one sibling more assimilated, the other more tied to heritage.

Symbols

  • Brush fire: As analyzed, this symbol encapsulates the uncontrollable, consuming nature of grief that accompanies the immigrant experience. It also suggests that loss can spread and transform a person’s life, much like how immigration alters everything.
  • RMS Olympic manifest: A symbol of both bureaucratic reduction and personal memory. It represents the journey, the hope, and the erasure of individual stories in official records. For Mary, the manifest is a tangible connection to her parents’ past and a reminder that she is the product of a voyage.

Addressing Complexity and Contradiction

The immigrant experience in Call Me Athena is not monolithic. Mary’s dual heritage—Greek and French—creates internal conflict. She must reconcile two different cultural traditions, languages, and perhaps conflicting expectations about womanhood. The author’s note reveals that Smith changed actual events, demonstrating that even family memory is a narrative construct. The novel thus acknowledges that the immigrant story is not a fixed truth but an interpretation shaped by generations.

Moreover, the Great Depression adds a layer of economic desperation. Immigrants often face scapegoating and job scarcity, yet Mary’s family perseveres. The brush fire metaphor, while focusing on grief, also implies that after the burn, new growth can emerge. Mary’s eventual independence suggests that loss can be transformed into strength.

5 Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the brush fire metaphor in Chapter 1 relate to the immigrant experience as depicted in the novel?
Answer: The brush fire represents the uncontrollable grief and loss that immigrants and their descendants carry. Like a small cinder that grows into a blaze, the initial loss of homeland expands to affect every aspect of life. Mary’s helplessness with a “useless bucket” mirrors the powerlessness immigrants often feel when faced with cultural erasure or poverty. Yet the metaphor also suggests that this grief, while destructive, can clear away old ground for new growth.

2. What role does the RMS Olympic manifest play in the novel, according to the author’s note?
Answer: The manifest is both a historical document and a personal symbol. It records Smith’s great-grandparents as passengers, linking them to the actual journey of Greek and French immigrants. Smith also highlights that her first name, Colby, appears on the document, which she interprets as a sign she was meant to write this story. The manifest connects the fictional narrative to real history, emphasizing that immigrant stories are both individual and collective.

3. How does Mary’s position as a second-generation immigrant create internal conflict?
Answer: Mary is torn between her parents’ Old World values and the American culture she encounters in Detroit. Her Greek father and French mother each carry their own traditions and expectations, which may clash. Mary’s struggle for independence—wanting to work, to be an elevator girl—reflects her need to forge her own identity while honoring her parents’ sacrifices. This dual heritage is a source of richness but also tension.

4. In what ways does the Great Depression in Detroit complicate the immigrant experience for Mary’s family?
Answer: The economic hardships of the 1930s intensify the struggle for survival. Immigrants often faced discrimination in hiring and were vulnerable to poverty. Mary’s family lived in Greektown and worked in the Ford factory, a far cry from the promised land they imagined. The depression tests their resilience and forces Mary to grow up quickly, seeking work to support her family while also confronting gender and ethnic barriers.

5. Why does the author include a photograph of her grandmother Mary in the Author’s Note, and what does that reveal about the immigrant theme?
Answer: The photograph shows Mary as an 18-year-old elevator girl, a moment when she began to assert her independence. Smith notes that the image was considered “a failure” because Mary’s foot was blurred from wiggling. This blurriness symbolizes the instability and movement inherent in the immigrant experience—nothing stays still, and the past is always slightly out of focus. Including this photo grounds the novel in real family history, emphasizing that immigrant stories are passed down through imperfect memory and must be lovingly reconstructed.

Conclusion

The immigrant experience in Call Me Athena is a tapestry of loss, hope, and transformation. Through Mary’s grief, the historical manifest, and her fight for independence, Colby Cedar Smith creates a nuanced portrait of what it means to belong to two worlds. The novel does not shy away from the pain of displacement, but it also celebrates the resilience that emerges from it. For readers and students, tracing this theme reveals the deep connections between personal identity and larger historical forces.