My object is a gabi, which is a traditional Ethiopian cotton blanket. My maternal grandmother hand wove the blanket sometime in the late 1980s for my mother to take with her on her journey to America. My mother left Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1989 for New York, where she spent a year until permanently settling in California. She lived in San Francisco until I was born in October of 1996 and then moved to Oakland, California. My mother came to America on her own and eventually helped bring two of her brothers once she was settled in San Francisco. She says that this gabi is her most treasured item, as it was one of the only things that reminded her of life back home in Ethiopia. 

– Maya Ephrem

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant