Shine Coconut moon by Neesha Meminger By Denisse Gonzalez

 Samar started asking her mom a lot of questions about her family and why she never seen her grandparents. Samar was really mad at her mom because she wouldn’t tell her anything about her parents, but uncle Sandeep was telling Samar a lot of things about her religion and how her grandparents are.

 When Samar finally met her grandparents for the first time she was really excited to know the way they were and if how her mom described them was true. But her grandparent refused to be with Samar without her mother’s consent because they didn’t want her to go even further away from them. Samar begged her mom to talk to her parents so she can meet them but her mom refused many times. After a long time she decided to go visit her parents. The visit ended up in a fight once again Samar’s mother didn’t like Punjabi traditions, like if you are too dark you are not as pretty as a light skin person. That broke Samar’s mom and she ran out of the house.

 Samar is a junior is High school who only lives with her mother.  Before 911 Samar never thought about asking her mom about her grandparents and uncles until one day came along Uncle Sandeep after fifteen years without seeing her sister (Samar’s mother) because she didn’t want Samar to go through what she had to go through with her mom trying to control her life and telling her what’s right and what’s not right. Uncle Sandeep Tried talking in to Samar’s mom to go visit their parents but she always refused.  After 911 people were being racist and insulting every Indian person calling them Osama and telling them to go back to India.

 In Samar’s school she was still being threaten by the same guys that threw trash to Uncle Sandeep’s car, once time during the school dance Samar left the dance to go get her purse that she left in the car, and outside were the three kids who are always bothering her, she passed by them the first time really fast but when she was coming back they stopped her and started to compliment her in the way they thought they were compliments Samar was getting scared and she didn’t know what do to they were all going to rape her.! So she yelled Mike! Her ex-boyfriend name and the three guys turned around and she ran as fast as she could down the hill and hid behind some bushes. She tried calling her mom but she didn’t answer so she called Uncle Sandeep. Once he arrived Samar told him what had happened and Uncle Sandeep got out of the car furious and said he will teach the guys a lesson. But when he went up to them they ran over him, causing him severe damage, he was set under plenty of surgeries and he got better after that.

 After everything that had happened to her after 911, she met some Indian girls just like her to whom she can relate to and talk about Punjabi stuff, her mom will take Samar to her grandparents’ house every weekend for a couple of hours her mom will sometimes get out of the car and say hi to her parents, while in school everything for Samar was going great and couldn’t get better. 