Athena and David quote from T.S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, (1915), with permission from Faber & Faber.
Athena quotes Sappho, Fragment 130. Sia refers to a letter from her sister, Eleftheria, that contains Sappho’s Tithonus poem, ‘Fragment 58’. The letter from Sia to Clara references Sappho’s poem to her daughter Cleïs: ‘I have a beautiful child whose face is like golden flowers, my beloved Cleïs’ (‘Fragment 132’).
The words Athena quotes when looking at the gravestones in Chapter 2 is an epitaph found on the tombstone of Antonios Manolis (d. 22 September 1880) who was believed to be one of the first Greeks in Australia. It is found in Picton Cemetery, New South Wales. I discovered this fact in Effie Alexakis and Leornard Kaniszewski, In Their Own Image: Greek Australians (Hale & Iremonger, NSW, 1998).
I am also indebted to the following articles and books, which I read while writing early drafts of this work:
Effie Alexakis and Leornard Kaniszewski, Greek Cafes and Milk Bars of Australia (Halstead Press, NSW, 2016).
Helen Anastasas (ed.), From Our Greek Kitchen to Yours (Castellorizan Association of WA Inc., Perth, 2016).
Juliet du Boulay, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village (Denise Harvey, Evia, 1994), first published Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974.
Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Denise Harvey, Evia, 2009).
Charmian Clift, Mermaid Singing and Peel me a Lotus, (Harper Collins, 2021), first published: Mermaid Singing (Michael Joseph Ltd, 1954), Peel Me a Lotus (Hutchinson, 1959).
Alan Dundes (ed.), The Evil Eye: A Casebook (University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), first published Garland Publishing (New York, 1981).
Rebecca Mead, ‘Just Add Sugar’, The New Yorker, October 28, 2013.
Panayota Nazou, Promised Brides: Experiences and Testimonies of Greek Women in Australia, special edition monograph – English version, (Modern Greek Studies Association, Australia & New Zealand, 2019), first published in Greek, 2013.
Many of the bridal traditions as described in Matia are from Kastellorizo, and were practised for many years by my mother’s family.