As the time for Thanksgiving dinner drew nearer, there was some panic in the kitchen, due to the turkey not cooking as fast as it should have. As my mother stated, “A big part of Thanksgiving is having the food ready on time for the relatives.” In our family, being kin means that you take […]
About an hour after I took the first picture of my brother and cousin, they were still in the same position on the couch, busy playing video games in the living room, where all the other men and boys were. Whether or not this was because they were too young for more responsibility, it did […]
Initially, as more family members arrived, the older men in the family, such as my Gramps in this photo, sat apart. They congregated in the living room while the majority of women were in the kitchen. This is because the older men of my family do not generally know how to cook, and as Gramps […]
Similarly to me bearing more responsibility than my brother, my mother bears more responsibility than anyone else on Thanksgiving day. While we all help cook the food, she is the one to organize and run the event. As Professor Lara talked about in lecture, kinship is also a cultural system that defines familial obligations. In […]
As the first relatives began to arrive, my brother was excused from further duties in the kitchen so that he could go play with his cousin. I, however, stayed in the kitchen to continue cooking. This was because I am older, and so have more responsibility. When asked why he didn’t help more, my brother […]
On Thanksgiving morning, before the guests arrive, the family who is hosting the party (in this case, my immediate nuclear family) wakes up early to begin preparing the food. A nuclear family is defined by Kenneth Guest as the Euro-American ideal of a family consisting of a wife, a husband, and two or three kids. […]
