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AMNA NAWAZ: This year, your holiday table is probably looking very different from last. Maybe there's fewer people at the table. Maybe there's an iPad or a laptop, so loved ones can Zoom in from far away. The fact is, separation over the holidays is a tradition for many. Tonight, Nadia Owusu shares her Humble Opinion on how immigrant families already know how to bridge these holiday distances.
NADIA OWUSU, Author, "Aftershocks: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Identity": I know, that for many people, the prospect of spending the holidays apart from their families feels like too much to bear, especially after this challenging year. But staying home is the right thing to do. Considering the immigrant experience can help put that sacrifice in perspective. All my life. I have lived far away from many of the people I love most. My Ghanaian father was a United Nations official. And for his job, we moved back and forth between Europe and East Africa. At 18, I moved to New York for university, and I have lived here my whole adult life. Members of my immediate family live in Ghana and the United Kingdom. Many of my close friends in New York are immigrants from all around the world. And we commiserate about missing important moments and celebrations such as anniversaries, milestone birthdays, and weddings. We have supported each other through worry and grief when our loved ones have fallen ill or passed away and we have not been able to travel home. We miss going to the market with our grandmothers or watching soccer games with our siblings. But my immigrant friends and I also share stories about how we manage to nurture deep relationships across great distances. We create rituals. A friend of mine and her mother in Mexico City regularly prepare meals together over the phone from the same recipes. Every Christmas, my cousin Laura in London chooses a different 1990s hip-hop song and writes Christmas lyrics to it. All of us around the world watch her perform it over Skype on Christmas Eve. This holiday season, we will find time on New Year's Day to make a toast and share resolutions.
Throughout the year, over the phone and Internet, we're intentional about coming together as a family to tell stories and imagine and plan our next in person reunion. The immigrant experience reminds us that there are many people who endure much longer separations from loved ones than are currently being called for by public health experts. So, stay home, and just know that not traveling does not have to mean canceling the holidays. It doesn't have to mean being alone.
