Thanksgiving, Then, and Now: When Being an Immigrant Feels More Fraught Than Ever, Coming Together Seems More Important

This week, your social media, like mine, will be filled with envy-inspiring images of the perfect Thanksgiving meal: a rich, burnished turkey, surrounded by some classic sides, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing, and of course pie of various kinds. Or perhaps you will encounter or make some vegan or vegetarian alternatives or an Indian- flavored Thanksgiving spread, the most satisfying mixture of all.  I have come to love all these varied takes on the Thanksgiving meal, but my first Thanksgiving featured none of these.

In November 2001, I was a new international student adjusting to my first semester of graduate school. It had been an exciting flurry of activity: finding apartments, roommates, adjusting to classes in a new academic system in a new country, learning to cook for the first time. It was challenging, but it was an adventure. I loved the crisp coolness of early fall, the brilliantly changing leaves, the dazzling foliage all new to me, and thrilling, despite the long shadow cast by 9/11. The twin towers had come down barely two weeks after I arrived in New York, and a few days after I’d left the city for Philadelphia to start graduate school. The U.S., and the world was shifting, as was the landscape for international students. In fact, at the time, I was working on a short film about Sikh immigrants in the area who had been targeted in hate crimes. There was an escalating and undeniable anxiety, but it wasn’t immediately palpable for me. I was just too busy. 

By November, though, the nights became chilly, and all of a sudden, the multi-hued trees turned bare and brown. The skies became gray, heavier, even as people around me kept mentioning the upcoming Thanksgiving break. I had no idea what the holiday meant, and assumed it was something vaguely religious–Christian, perhaps. I didn’t realize what a big deal it was until everyone started asking me what I was doing for Thanksgiving. My answer: “I don’t know, nothing?” My cousin and his (then) wife had invited me to celebrate the holiday with them in upstate New York, but it felt like a long trip for such a short break. A guy I had dated a few times invited me to Thanksgiving with his family, but it felt like too much, too soon. Besides, I had deadlines looming. My procrastination habits had followed me across oceans to the new country, and now I had an entire research paper to write over the break. “You’re going to spend Thanksgiving on your own, writing a paper?” a new grad school friend asked me incredulously. 

That’s exactly what I did. As others started recipes from scratch, I started my paper from scratch. By Wednesday night, my roommate had left to spend the holiday with her boyfriend. So I had the entire apartment to myself, and plenty of peace and quiet to focus on my work. In fact, I soon realized that I probably had the entire apartment block to myself. By Thursday, the whole place, usually bustling with a mix of students, professionals, and some seniors, was eerily quiet. I looked out the window, and saw nobody. I rode the elevator down, walked down the street to the nearby shopping center, and I saw barely a soul. A couple of cars passed by as I walked back with some supermarket sushi and a salad. By this time, the wind was kicking in, I was suddenly colder than I’d ever been, and I realized that I still didn’t have a winter jacket. So I came back and finished my Thanksgiving sushi on my bed, which was at the time the only piece of real furniture in my room. At that moment, perhaps for the first time, I felt the weight of being far away from home. I didn’t even (yet) have a cell phone on my grad school budget, so I felt well and truly alone. I realized too, that this Thanksgiving thing was really a big deal. On the plus side, I did end up writing that 20 page paper, turning it in on time for my Monday class.

I also learned the dark history of Thanksgiving, a feast built on the  brutal erasure of Native American people, inescapably colonial. A few years ago, when my daughter encountered this brutal history, her illusions about the holiday crumbled. 

My second Thanksgiving was really my first. By the following November, I was more attuned to holidays in the United States. By this time, I was seriously dating Rob (now my husband) and I was invited to Thanksgiving with his family. I had met his family, but this was the first formal holiday I was spending with them. We were as different as could be, a clear case of opposites attracting. Culturally, politically, and religiously, our families inhabited completely different worlds. But they were warm, welcoming, unpretentious, and boisterous. The extended family was a typical American immigrant mix: Irish, Polish, Czech, infused with elements of Italian, Chinese, Filipino, and, with my arrival, Indian. My future brother and sister- in- law presided over the holiday, and they were the ones who introduced me to the classic Thanksgiving feast. There was the gleaming turkey as the centerpiece, all crispy skin giving way to tender, juicy meat. Buttery mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, two kinds of stuffing, a herby classic and a sausage and sage one, cranberry sauce, of course, and gravy, at least three kinds of rolls and more pie than anybody should have. But by the time I’d made it through drinks and appetizers, the crab cakes, the kielbasa, the cheese board, I was already full. I was no stranger to feasts, I was Indian and Bengali at that, which is  precisely why I felt at home. But the particular combination of flavors that come with Thanksgiving felt delightfully homey, fresh, comforting. I was hooked, and I went around telling everyone that Thanksgiving was certainly the best of the American holidays, and it was the food. (It still is.)

Over the next few years, I celebrated many holidays with my new in-laws, and I became wiser in the ways of Thanksgiving. It didn’t take me very long to realize that while turkey was traditionally the centerpiece, it was also famously bland, tasteless, and uninspiring. I  learned that in the ongoing debate—turkey or sides?—the sides usually win. I also learned that it’s not really about a particular dish. It’s the combination of flavors—turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce melting together in your mouth. It’s really about the layering of unique ingredients and twists by different generations, woven into different immigrant stories and experiences. Like the classic Thanksgiving turkey, flavored with the 23 different Chinese spices in a special (secret) rub made by my Hong Kong born sister in law. Like the Polish Kielbasa stuffing, or the masala turkey. It’s also not about the first, formal sit down meal but the seconds and thirds, and the leftovers made into different combinations: the classic turkey sandwich, turkey breakfast casserole, turkey leftover biryani. It’s this mix of harvest ingredients from a partially imagined pilgrim past, layered with tastes and variations from immigrant families around the globe, that makes Thanksgiving quintessentially North American.

I also learned the dark history of Thanksgiving, a feast built on the  brutal erasure of Native American people, inescapably colonial. A few years ago, when my daughter encountered this brutal history, her illusions about the holiday crumbled. We went through a period of questioning: should we celebrate this holiday? We had plenty of others to celebrate after all. But despite the origins, the endless possibility of riffing on Thanksgiving classics, of trying new recipes along with old favorites, keeps bringing us back to the table.

So this year, my twenty-fourth Thanksgiving (!) I will host a small family gathering, a few loved ones around a table. We are planning to make a masala turkey, classic mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, and an apple pie my daughter will bake. We are last-minute people, and we are still finishing the shopping and changing our plans as we go. Over the years, the extended family I celebrated my first (real) Thanksgiving with has become smaller. Older people have died, and the family has become more divided. We don’t even really know why, but old tensions resurfaced, political divisions which once felt surmountable, now represent a chasm too far to cross. I realize that this too is a typical Thanksgiving story, politics and religion shaping and reshaping who gets to sit around the table. As my kids grow older, we are trying to forge our own traditions, and giving up the ones that don’t make sense. But the food and coming together with a few loved ones still feels important—especially at a time when being an immigrant in the United States feels more fraught than ever, more uncertain than even my first, post 9/11 Thanksgiving. 

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Tilottama (Tima) Karlekar is a writer, editor, film and media scholar, and mom of two currently based in the Philadelphia area.