Still, I adored the American thumbprint cookies of my adopted homeland. While I did become an American, I don’t think it was due to the dozens of cookies I baked, or my participation in Hallmark holiday traditions. As a teenage Latina immigrant newly arrived in the United States, I remember feeling that the act of making holiday thumbprint cookies was a part of the process of becoming a “real” American, as though mastering decorated cookies would somehow help me attain citizenship.
