Feeling the Love from Twenty-One Cousins

Feeling the Love from Twenty-One Cousins
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Wonderful, Wacky Family
By Sky Khan

Cousins are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.
~Ed Cunningham

Our family has a long history of shenanigans. Over the years, there were feuds, grudges, rivalries, and recurring conflict. Despite this, there was always an undercurrent of love and loyalty among my parents' combined twelve siblings. I grew up wondering if that intense combination of devotion and discord was a part of the American immigrant experience.

My father was the first to arrive to the United States in the 1970s through a college scholarship. He sponsored many of his siblings for U.S. citizenship soon after. With so many aunts and uncles came a lot of offspring. I had twenty-one cousins, and many of us shared a distinctly ethnic last name. (Keep reading)