Ethan Branson remembers a dark, damp basement and a call for volunteers. He raises his hand. Someone says, “You can’t send a boy to do a man’s job” (1).

Seventeen-year-old Maya Aziz lives in the Chicago suburbs with her conservative Indian parents, Asif and Sofia. She would prefer to be at an informal prom party with her friend Violet, but instead she is attending an Indian wedding with her parents. She smiles to please her mother, and she is dressed to please her mother, too, in traditional Indian clothes and high heels. The wedding hall is decorated with marigolds, red carnations, and strings of lights, and Bollywood music plays in the background. Ayesha, the bride, agreed to an arranged marriage, which surprises Maya: “I never imagined her succumbing to an arranged marriage, especially not right out of college” (5). Maya has brought her camcorder to record the wedding. Her father mentions that videography is a good hobby.

Sofia, Maya’s mother, beckons Maya to her table, where Sofia introduces Maya to Kareem, a sophomore engineering student at Princeton. Sofia announces that Maya will attend the University of Chicago next year. Maya feels guilty because she has been accepted by NYU to study film and would prefer to go New York instead of Chicago, but she has not told anyone else except

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