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As Thanksgiving approaches and my extended family tries to figure out what to prepare, I have been thinking about how my Thanksgivings when I was growing up were a fusion of Asian and American. Turkey and white rice. Cranberries and lumpia. Along that line of thinking, three Asian American perspectives on Thanksgiving caught my eye. First, this post by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang talks about how her family used to try to imitate traditional Thanksgiving meals and how Thanksgiving became more meaningful and more tasty when they began to create their own multicultural traditions. Second, I really like this post by Eric Nakamura, of Giant Robot fame, on one of his Thanksgivings, which mixes sashimi and turkey. The pictures are mouth watering! The third perspective comes from SSH…Thanks-Givin.. Thanksgiving, an essay by Andrew Lam, author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora. He talks about his very first Thanksgiving after arriving from Vietnam and what Thanksgiving now means to him.
How do you as Asian Americans celebrate Thanksgiving? As a strictly American holiday? Do you fuse Asian and American elements like sashimi and turkey? Do you not celebrate it at all?
