“Are You Really Sisters?” by Lauren Alwan (Fiction ’08)

An excerpt from “Are You Really Sisters?” by Lauren Alwan (Fiction ’08), published by Catapult.

“Not long after my paternal grandmother turned eighty, she gifted my sister and me with two Spanish shawls. She’d bought them as a young mother in Brooklyn when my grandfather ran the family bakery on Atlantic Avenue, and decades later, here they were at her home in Los Angeles. The size of tablecloths, they had been packed away carefully, the silk of each was in perfect condition, heavy with embroidery that was lustrous and intact. One shawl was cream-colored, with clusters of pink roses; the other, black, with a graceful network of entwined buds of coral and pale green; both were trimmed with luxuriant silk fringe. I’d long coveted the Spanish shawls I’d seen in vintage shops and could never afford. “Take one,” my grandmother said, “and give the other to your sister.”

But how to decide between them? I loved them equally, knew I’d be happy with either, and guessed my sister would feel the same. Born of the same parents, we have always been a study in opposites, especially our coloring—I’m light-skinned, with straight, dark blonde hair, and blue eyes, while my sister has an olive complexion, black curly hair, and deep brown eyes. Though this now strikes me as a case of overthinking, at the time, I worried that whichever shawl I chose would seem like a comment on our differences…”

Continue reading the essay here: https://catapult.co/stories/column-sisterhood-identity-culture-in-multicultural-family-lauren-alwan