There are good books, meh books, and great books. There are “not my genre” books, and “why don’t they write more of these?” books (I’m looking at you, medical science, history, and disease people).
Of all the books out there, the most insidious are the expensive books, and I don’t mean first editions or pages made of gold leaf and unicorn hide. I mean books that are too good to hurl out the window when you realize what’s happening, but that force you to buy things. Michele Zauner’s Crying in H Mart is a very expensive book.
It is the story of a mother-daughter relationship layered with loss, American angst, and relative immigrant rigidity, but it’s also a story every first-generation person of any gender here knows, especially those of mixed heritage.
Mixed heritage first-gen people like me grew up feeling implied or direct criticism from parents, grandparents, cousins, and other relatives because, while they may have loved us, we were never what they were: All of their nationality, speaking their language as fluently as they did, able to sing along to the songs and dance the dances they grew up participating in. They teased or mocked us when we spoke imperfectly, or were hurt that we didn’t understand through osmosis the culture and customs they grew up in, but that they denied us, that they kept us from fully learning, or learning at all. They were gatekeepers, pushing us away from what defined them so that we could "be Americans."
But we were never quite Americans, just as we were never quite Koreans, Spaniards, Lebanese, or wherever our people came from. We were never in on the joke, couldn’t understand or keep up with the nuance.
In multicultural households where more than one non-English language was spoken, we were, as often as not, taught neither. We only learned English, critiqued by our teachers for tortured sentence structures that snuck out like tattling literary DNA: I don’t remember the moment in which left my mother to go to the market; The plate fell from me and broke; She went to a party yesterday night and got mega-high.
But many of us found or reached for our identity through the culture of food.
“There’s a stall for Korean street food that serves up Korean ramen…; giant steamed dumplings full of pork and glass noodles housed in a thick, cake-like dough; and tteokbokki, chewy, bite-sized cylindrical rice cakes boiled in a stock with fish cakes, red pepper, and gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that used in pretty much all Korean dishes…There’s my personal favorite… tangsuyuk — a glossy, sweet-and-sour orange pork — seafood noodle soup, fried rice, and black bean noodles.”
The first chapter alone cost me $124 and change in H Mart deliveries. Deliveries, because if I’d gone to H Mart myself I’d have easily spent $300.
As a kid, I’d sit in the kitchen with all the Lebanese old ladies1 as they cooked for the upcoming celebrations and holidays. The 1940s metal kitchen table had a white enamel top with a light green scroll pattern around the edges. The side leaves were lifted to make enough room for the legs of lamb, bowls of flour and cracked wheat, cousa squash, rice, tomatoes, cabbage, garlic, and spices. Freed from the factory floors, their husbands watching TV in the den, there was no need for discussion about the menu or recipes. They’d make what the market told them to make based on freshness and availability, and the recipes were in their hands. Instead, they’d gossip and tell stories, stretch and reshape wars and alliances between cousins and friends, laugh to the point of tears, sometimes, at something that happened yesterday, or thirty years ago to someone long since gone. Occasionally one of them would stand up from the table to sing and dance in her house dress and apron, arms high, clapping her hands, as they all joined in for a verse before getting back to the serious chatter and checking the stove.
Patiently they’d show me how to hollow out the cousa for the stuffing. For the dough they’d hand me a bowl and explain, “You put in some flour, a little sugar, some salt and yeast, and enough water. Kneed it until it bounces back, then cover it with a little oil, some Saran and a towel and let it rise til it’s ready.”
The razor-sharp knives that prepared the lamb were honed into unique shapes after years of use. Their blades would fly, separating the choice pieces of meat for the raw kibbe, the rest for the baked, to be stuffed with pine nuts, onions, and spices, or with rice, wrapped in grape leaves and topped with whole garlic cloves.
My otherness vanished as I learned to listen and feel for doneness, to season and taste for not just the dish, but the meal as a whole. I’d follow the stories through Lebanenglish and innuendo, though somehow they’d always revert to full Arabic when talking about Rose and Father Malouf, who’d been seen leaving her house early that morning. Their floury-soft, flapping upper arms erased the taut, toned bitchiness of American shame as they reached and stirred, comfortable in shared tradition and purpose.
“Standing at the counter, we’d open every Tupperware container full of homemade banchan, and snack together in the blue dark of the humid kitchen. Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker.”
God damn this woman.
I was trained in classic French cooking techniques, but then took a year of lessons from a Chinese cooking school and interned in a “pan-Asian” restaurant in Chinatown for a couple of months. I have a ridiculously large assortment of Asian ingredients on hand. But never exactly the right ingredients.
Crying in H Mart took me three weeks to read, because every chapter-and-a-half, give or take, I’d have to fling the Kindle across the room, dislodge the beagle, grab my phone, and desperation shop Instacart as I prepped other ingredients. I’m not even counting the multiple “Pay $2 rush fee” charges on this tab. I may have permanently ruined my front, right-hand burner by forgetting the eel sauce which bubbled over and found its way into every channel and gas outlet before solidifying into petrified, burnt caramel armor. Everyone knows that’s the best burner.
Crying in H Mart is a good book. Ten out of ten. Do not recommend.
Mornign Teaistisms
Jeju Island is South Korea’s largest island. It’s a popular tourist destination with boring things like Hawaii-esque waterfalls and beaches, three UNESCO heritage sites, lava tube caves, and those women who deep-water free-dive for abalone and such. The history there is remarkably strife-ridden for something that small sitting in an ocean that big, though I guess that’s true of a lot of Pacific lands.
But the important thing is, they grow amazing tea, and they have a tea museum and a tea store.
If you Youtube or Google Jeju Island tea you fall down a rabbit hole of tea porn. For years now I’ve purchased sampler boxes from various sources - the one pictured here, and I can’t remember where I got it, was particularly good, but I’ve never had a bad one.
The Ujeon is so yummy in its depth and soft, rich flavor. The ones with added petals and things still good but less my cup of tea. Snort.
They were probably my age… or younger…shit…
Thank you, Marjie. You now have me frantically searching for my grandmother's recipe for Pflaumenkuchen! Awesome story, as always!!!!!!
Growing up in Beirut, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Rabat, I knew whose houses had the creamiest hummus, the smokiest baba ghanouj and the freshest baklava. I learned how to make them from Claudia Roden's books. I craved old fashioned donuts and Fritos when I lived there. A few months ago I was reading about life on a canal longboat. One of the characters made an eggplant dish from Claudia Roden. Guess what was on the menu the next week. MB does not carry ground lamb,☹️
I am on the waiting list for Crying in H Mart. I feel lucky that Reliable Market is just across the street and I can assuage my craving for Korean food easily even though their selection is much more limited by size and market pressure.
The cozy mysteries of Mia P Manansala have me craving Filipino food. Not so easily found. Garlic fried rice and Filipino sausage will be prepared as soon as I find some.