Thanksgiving Tag

As a teenager, especially an immigrant teenager, you long for nothing more than to be “normal” in America. You want to be Samantha as opposed to Samita. You want a white picket fence, apple pie cooling in the window, a mom, dad, and siblings living under one roof, and the smell of turkey on Thanksgiving. After moving to Southern California from Chicago, my name was still Samita, our fence blew down every time the Santa Ana winds raged through Rialto (my father and the other neighbors decided to put the fence up after every “windy season” and for a few months...