When my father arrived in America from Ethiopia in 1978, he was resettled, with the help of an immigration agency, to Peoria, Ill. He found a job working on the factory floor of a Caterpillar Inc. plant, and by the time my mother, sister, and I joined him two years later, he’d already found a two-bedroom apartment two blocks from the Catholic school my sister and I would attend. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It was a startlingly American childhood, made more so by the fact that we spent our weekends at a Southern Baptist church on the other side of town.