An Interview with Popy Raekou

MR:
Hi everyone. My name is Marie. I am an Irish speech and language therapist and children’s
author. I have lived all over the world, first with my parents as my dad was part of the Irish
diplomatic corps and then on my own as I left Ireland to move to Singapore in my 20s. I
currently live in Paris with my husband and three daughters. We are a bilingual family and
speak both English and French at home.
 

PR:
Hello to you too! My name is Popy and I come from Athens, Greece. I am a teacher of Greek as
a foreign language and I meet people from all over the world. I studied in the UK, my cousins
live in Australia and the USA, my son studied in Amsterdam and both my children went to
bilingual schools in Athens. Then my brother moved to the Middle East and had a child there.
Automatically I found myself as a far away sister and aunt. I started to realise that life would be
different and emotions would fluctuate.

MR:
Well, we are a bilingual family so I wanted to have the book available to people who spoke both
our home languages. It was a natural decision for me, although it meant a lot of extra work!
 

PR:
We are more or less bilingual too as we all learn and work with different languages. Also having
family abroad makes you bilingual because you have to understand the other side not only on
language matters but also on the way of thinking. I always found it interesting to read in two
languages because I believe in multilingualism as a means of understanding the world.

MR:
There are so many, but for me the most important are the chance to learn other languages and learn about other cultures and peoples. I learned so much growing up in a place that could not
have been more different to my native Ireland. I am constantly learning, even here in France, a
culture that is, on the face of it, quite similar to my own. I am so grateful my children have that
same chance. Being exposed to the history, culture and even the food of different places is just a wonderful learning experience and it is something I would wish for everyone.
 

PR:

There are many advantages because apart from different languages you can practice, it is the
feeling of the global citizen that you carry and you see things wisely, wider and from many
perspectives. This is a special benefit because it makes people more tolerant, flexible and open.
I am very happy to see my nephew talking about his friend from Brazil, for example or how they
altogether celebrated Diwali at school. I am proud of him and his multicultural experiences.

MR:
I have been writing since I was a child and when I had my own children I started writing for
them. This book started as a little story I wrote for my girls. When I read it to them first, my
eldest looked at me, wide-eyed, and said “that girl is just like us!”. And it was then that I decided
to take the story and start working on it for publication. It’s about a child with parents from two places and family all over the world. So many families are like that now, many more than when I was a kid growing up in Tokyo. I wanted to give them some representation.

PR:
I have been writing for many years but this is the first time I have written a kid’s book and that is because my nephew was born and lives in another country. I was very sad to find out that I
could not enjoy those little things as an aunt and when the pandemic made it harder to meet, it was my decision to express this feeling of having a family afar. Greece is a country that has a large diaspora and I can now share these feelings.

MR:
Absolutely, but not necessarily negatively, but it does mean that families have to work harder to
create and maintain bonds. That is now it has played out in my family anyway. A lot of effort is
made on both sides to carve out time to visit and call, so that, especially for the children, they
have enough exposure to create their own relationships with their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. That being said, it’s not always easy and every family will be different.
 

PR:
No doubt there is an impact because even if we can always be in touch due to technology, still
you cannot have the option to touch them, to hug them or to share those little every day things
you would like to. They have a different life. They are away. However , if you really want to
keep the bond you can do it !

MR:
For me this was the hardest part of my publishing journey. French is my weaker language
(having learned as an adult) and my first draft was a massive failure. I took a lot of time to
rewrite it with better overall turn of phrase and then I had it edited by several native speakers.
The thing I found hardest was the fact that we actually represent feelings differently in the two
languages so a direct translation was never going to work. I learned so much from the process. I am really proud of the result but it definitely was a team effort!
 

PR:
English writing was a challenge because it is not my native language. The problem was not only
to translate but to write in an English way of saying things. So when I finished writing the English part I had some second proof readings from native speakers and surprisingly my Greekness was not such a big problem because I used to read a lot of children’s literature when I was a child myself and then as a mother to my kids. It is important to think that even if it is about a dual language book there are differences in the way the language is used.