San Francisco, California – The memories come back in flashes: the ink-black night, the whipping cold, the dark waves lapping at the side of the boat as Tashina Banks Rama stepped on board.

Tashina was only a child when it started. But every November, on Thanksgiving Day, she and her younger sister would blink awake in the early hours of the morning to join her parents on the edge of the San Francisco Bay.

It was always freezing, always quiet, at least at first.

As she hopped from the pier to the ferry, Tashina remembers hearing the water splashing below. Pendleton blankets and star quilts, patterned with radiating bursts of colour, would rustle out from bags as families piled on board. And as the streetlights and towers of the city faded behind them, a sudden drumbeat would rupture th

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