For my special object, I chose my gold heart charm bracelet, which I hold very dearly to my heart. In June 2010, my dad, my sisters and I moved to America in hopes of a better life with financial freedom and education. Unfortunately, we had to leave my mom behind in Guyana because my parents weren’t legally married, so my grandmother couldn’t sponsor her as well. Before we moved our entire lives away without my mother, my father gave her this bracelet as a testament to his love for her. A couple of months later, my dad and I returned to Guyana for my parents’ legal marriage. After this was complete, my dad sponsored my mother, and she came to America in March 2013. Later, in 2018, my mom passed the bracelet down to me, her youngest daughter. This bracelet holds a very special place in my heart because it represents two generations sacrificing, evolving, and changing their lives for a better future. It has traveled across the ocean, existing on two separate continents while symbolizing the connection and love between my parents. It served as a connection between my mother and father through times of separation and now serves as a reminder of how far we’ve come from a little village in Guyana. To honor my family’s immigrant story, this bracelet will continue to be passed down to my daughter and granddaughter for generations to come.
The Greatest Fast-Food: Turkish Döner
Gyros, shawarmas, and al pastor tacos. Besides being delicious, what do they all have in common? They are all different variations of the same food: the Turkish döner kebab. The dish consists of seasoned meat in the form of beef/lamb mix or chicken, roasted on a vertical rotating spit device. Döner can be eaten as a sandwich or alongside rice. My parents both ate döners often as children when growing up in Turkey during the 80s and 90s, whether it was a cheap version from a shop off the streets, or a better quality and more expensive version in Turkish restaurants.
My Dad, pictured above in the year 1998 next to a döner device in a Turkish restaurant in Brooklyn, described döner as a “comfort food.” When they immigrated here in the late 1990s, döner became a bridge to Turkish culture for them despite being abroad. For me, growing up in NYC meant eating many different versions of döner: whether it was from an authentic Turkish restaurant in Astoria, a gyro from a Greek food cart, a Berlin-style döner with fresh vegetables and tasty sauces, or as a home-made Iskender kebab (a different Turkish dish with döner meat). All of these foods, while delicious to eat, provide a special connection to me through döner being a cross-cultural food, allowing me to connect my childhood and the döner I eat/ate here to what my parents ate in Turkey.
