This Is Not Our First Holiday Season Away From Our Families

Immigrants have long felt the pain of being separated from loved ones

Priyanka Bansal
GEN
Published in
5 min readDec 21, 2020

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A wooden curio cabinet stacked with luggage, seen from the doorway of a bedroom.
Photo: Wong Yee Tat/EyeEm/Getty Images

The first conscious, whole memories I have of meeting my extended family are right around my 16th birthday — at my grandmother’s funeral. Rather than celebrating the typical American Sweet Sixteen, I was flown to India for the first time in over 10…

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Priyanka Bansal
GEN
Writer for

Freelance journalist, Rutgers alumna. Words in GEN, NBCThink, The Juggernaut, Wear Your Voice, and more.