about last week.

August 1, 2017

this minion perfectly illustrates my mood as it is now, as it was last week, as it has been the last few weeks.

last week was a [insert-adjective-here] week, what with the republican zombie healthcare bill that just won't die (or has it finally?!? i'm not holding my breath) and what with the cheeto vomiting more crap on twitter, this time about banning trans people from serving in the military, never mind that trans people display more courage in their day-to-day than the cheeto has shown in the entirety of his life — and never mind that trans people are apparently such terrifyingly formidable people that they should be barred from public bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

last week was also a low week personally, and it continues to be a series of low weeks as my insomnia continues to take its toll. my mood has been low, my dreams/nightmares/whatevers gone haywire, and i'm tired, tired, tired.

i wish i could sleep for days and wake up well-rested for once.

i can't seem to get that, though, so here, let's talk nice things.

when i think about nice things, i think automatically about food, so here is this: republique makes my favorite breakfast in all the land.

if you’re ever in los angeles, go to republique and order the regular breakfast with soft scrambled eggs (because they can actually soft scramble eggs), an iced dirty matcha latte (it’s better iced than hot), and a chewy chocolate-chocolate chip cookie (it has nuts, though, so nix this if you’re allergic). add a slice of tres leeches cake if you’re feeling indulgent (it’s not too sweet, don’t worry) and/or a hand pie if you’re starving and need something to tide you over while you wait for your food (they’ll heat the hand pie up for you; ask for sri racha).

come back and thank me for the bombass recommendation.

i spend a lot of time on twitter during the week, and i have no shame admitting that it’s my major news source, like, in that, it’s the source that alerts me to the fresh new hells being launched on the world — that, and the new yorker, which i also read religiously during the week.

there was a nice thread on twitter last week, talking about work and creating art and why that matters today. it talked specifically about why writing books matters, books about made-up worlds and made-up people, books that don’t make overt political statements and/or take moral stances, and i understand that struggle, that conflict, that desire to create something of meaning, except what does that look like? what does it mean to create something that means something?

the twitterer (whom i unfortunately do not remember) made the point that it’s not about being an activist or about taking political stances or about delivering moral messages. it’s about the fact that the work itself is hope; whether we write fiction or memoirs or treatises, doing the work itself, the act of creating itself, is an example of a way to be. the work in its own, the act of doing the work, is to demonstrate a way to fight back.

and, so, we work, and we create, and that looks different to each person. i take photos of light and shadows, of minions from mcdonald’s happy meals, of everything i eat. i read. i write on this site, and i edit my short story collection, and i rewrite that essay on living with depression and suicide and falling in love last year. i take ages to reply to DMs on instagram, and i give up on ever catching up on comments, and i apologize for that, but that’s just the way things are.

i think about buying an actual camera, like a DSLR, instead of just using the camera on my iphone 7. i think of new projects, earmark restaurants to try, envision future collaborations and chart amorphous ways to making those ideas a reality.

i try.

i also spend a stupid amount of time during the week tracking my lunch deliveries. it’s kind of creepy, the fact that i can do this at all, stare at my browser and watch the little icon that signifies my drivers moving along the map. it gets funny when they near the office, the rounds they sometimes make around the block, and i’m just like, i put a note on there, saying you can call or text me, and i’ll come down to the street. parking’s an ass in LA. LA’s an ass of a city for deliveries, too sprawled out to allow for efficiency.

LA’s an ugly, weird city, and, yeah, it’s got its charms, but i feel the frustrations when i’m trying to get from point A to point B, for example when i’m trying to get from koreatown to west hollywood for a reading. i think, god, this place is hideous, and, ugh, it’s like someone just vomited flat ugliness onto hot land, and i think, okay, fine, maybe i shouldn’t be so uncharitable — LA’s not that bad, and it gets great light. you can’t deny the fabulous, kind of magical qualities of california light, but see how i can't even give LA that? i have to generalize to all of california to make any praiseworthy statement possible, though i don't mean to impart hostility here — it amuses me, this mess of a relationship i have with this place.

sometimes, i wonder if i've simply become so accustomed to hating on LA that it comes so naturally to me. other times, though, especially when i'm landing at LAX and looking down at the sprawl below me, i think, nah, it kinda deserves it.

and maybe part of me feels entitled to this, kind of like how i also feel entitled to hate on NYC for all its ills. in some way, LA is also my city after all, and it bears the baggage of my history and trauma, and i feel unbridled in expressing my distaste of this place because i’ve lived so much of my life here and it is a part of me.

in some way, this is my way of claiming this place as my own.

all i’ve been craving these days is something cold and sweet, and that’s all kinds of terrible when you’re type 2 like i am. i feel like i spend an incongruous amount of time making bargains with myself — like, okay, i can eat three pieces of watermelon, but only three. or, okay, i can eat some ice cream if i walk there and back. or, okay, yeah, i know this is all bullshit, i should just be abstaining, should be more afraid of the consequences of not eating well, of not getting my glucose levels down lower, of not taking care of myself because self-care, blah blah blah, i want something cold and sweet.

it doesn't help that i've finally tried jeni's and am obsessed. jeni's delivers everything i want in ice cream — it's creamy and not too sweet, and it tastes like the ingredients it uses, instead of like processed, sugary crap. like, the mango buttermilk frozen yogurt tastes like a creamy, frozen, pureed mango (i. love. mango), and the roasted strawberry buttermilk is one of the best ice creams i've eaten, and the brambleberry crisp is like pie in ice cream form, complete with crumble topping — and, omg, i can't get enough of jeni's. i went again on sunday, and i'm going again this weekend.

i know, i know, self-care, blah blah blah, but four and twenty blackbirds is also in town this weekend, and they're going to be at jeni's, and one of my favoritest people is back stateside, so pie and ice cream, there will be. i'll make up for it by eating cleaner meals.

in 45 days, i'll be back home in brooklyn.

here's some big, exciting news: jenny zhang’s sour heart comes out into the world today!!! go hie yourself to a bookstore and dive into this wonderful collection!

cue storytime?

i grew up reading exclusively (and i mean, exclusively) from “the classics,” aka the white canon, aka mostly dead white guys. i mean, sure, there were a few dead white women thrown into the mix, too, but they were mostly men, and i didn’t read contemporary fiction until i was well into college. the closest i got before then was in the twelfth grade, when my AP lit teacher (still one of my favorite teachers) spent the year having us read existentialists and absurdists.

one day, several years ago, i was browsing the internet for one reason or another when i came across a blog called fashion for writers. at the time, it was written by jenny zhang, but it had been founded by esmé weijun wang (whose debut novel, the border of paradise, was published last year and is incredible), and there were links to their respective websites, links i followed to obsession, basically. i read esmé’s site religiously, and i mildly stalked jenny in new york, going to all her readings and totally having mini-omg! moments when i passed her twice — once, in powerhouse arena (in its former space) on my way to the bathroom and, once, on my way into mcnally jackson to pick up my preordered copy of the border of paradise.

it was so weird and so cool to read their writing, and you have to remember that i was this asian-american kid who'd always loved literature and loved writing but had never stopped to think that writing was this thing that i could do. i had no freaking idea that you could get paid to write, that people were doing this all the time, and, no, i wasn't stupid — i knew that people wrote for a living — i didn't think people like me did. you know. asian-american kids. asian-american daughters.

because, as far as i knew, in the world in which i grew up, we didn't write — we went to med school or law school or business school. we got married to nice [christian] asian-american boys. we had kids and stayed home and home-schooled.

we didn't write, and, more than that, we didn't write about mental health or bodies or the grimy, sticky areas of life. we didn't write about ourselves, our asian-american backgrounds, our experiences with sexism and racism and bigotry. we didn't write about sex or death or violence. we didn't do these things; we didn't put words on or give voice to anything that ran counter to the accepted status quo.

one of the things i have come to love the most is coming across a writer who makes me imagine different ways of writing, of being. jenny and esmé's writing introduced me to that, to new ways of thinking about myself, my asian-american identity, my own writing, and it's been an incredible experience since, seeing how all you really need is a spark to shed new light on the world and make it open up. i think about the women i've come to read and love in the last few years and have helped shape me as a writer — alice sola kim, patty yumi cottrell, nicole chung, rachel khong, krys lee, susan choi, celeste ng, women who do different things with their writing, who tell stories that illuminate different facets of the human experience and bring a rich vibrance to the world of books.

and i think about women in general, women whom i admire who live their truths and excel at their craft — barbara lynch, kristen kish, gabrielle hamilton, ellen bennett — omg, help me name someone who's not related to food — molly young, molly yeh, julia turshen — i suppose it's unavoidable; i love food; what can i say?

and all this loops back to what that twitterer said in that thread last week and what sherman alexie said to buzzfeed and what i wrote at the end of my hunger post — that what matters is that we are out here, that we are trying and creating and working. sometimes, most times, i dare say, at least on the everyday, day-to-day level, it's not about activism, and it's not about overt politicism. sometimes, it's just about telling our own truths, whatever those truths are, and all fiction — all good fiction, all good art — stems from the writer's truth.

and maybe that's how we effect change, not [solely] by converting those who stand against us but by bolstering and supporting those like us, by living alternate ways to be, to see the world, to write and tell stories and exist. i think we kind of undermine the amount of hope and encouragement that alone provides because it never feels like bravery or courage or like anything significant, just getting through the day and doing the work given to us, but it means something — at least, it means a whole lot to me, to be able to look up and see women who are doing the work simply by doing their work, whether it's writing, cooking, bookkeeping, raising children, teaching, whatever it is, women who are out there, living their truths and trying to bring about a better, more equal world.

and, so, i'll repeat what i said before because this is something i'll keep repeating, over and over and over again: stay.

we're out here, and we're women of color, and we're straight and queer and religious and not religious and able-bodied and disabled and you name it, we are it, and we write and cook and live, so stay. stay curious, stay open-minded, stay alive.

stay.

i ate at bestia last week. :3

it was delicious and amazing and everything i hoped it would be.

i want to eat there again.

here’s a summer reading list, given in no particular order, if you’re looking for something good to read in these last few weeks of summer:

jenny zhang, sour heart (random house, 2017)
rachel khong, goodbye, vitamin (holt, 2017)
patty yumi cottrell, sorry to disrupt the peace (mcsweeney’s, 2017)
celeste ng, everything i never told you (penguin press, 2014)
yoojin grace wuertz, everything belongs to us (random house, 2017)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
ruth ozeki, a tale for the time being (penguin books, 2013)
alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
julie otsuka, when the emperor was divine (knopf, 2002)
jung yun, shelter (picador, 2016)
susan choi, my education (viking, 2013)

2017 international women's day.

March 8, 2017

yiyun li, dear friend from my life i write to you in your life (random house, 2017)
julie otsuka, the buddha in the attic (anchor books, 2012)
annabelle kim, tiger pelt (leaf-land press, 2016)
rachel khong, goodbye, vitamin (henry holt, forthcoming, 2017)
catherine chung, forgotten country (riverhead, 2012)
susan choi, the foreign student (harper perennial, 2004)
min-jin lee, pachinko (grand central publishing, 2017)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
ruth ozeki, a tale for the time being (penguin, 2013)
krys lee, how i became a north korean (viking, 2016)
celeste ng, everything i never told you (penguin press, 2014)
jung yun, shelter (picador, 2016)
padma lakshmi, love, loss, and what we ate (ecco, 2016)
alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
shawna yang ryan, green island (knopf, 2016)

it’s international women’s day, so here’s a stack that i am so fucking jazzed i can even make: i have no substantial data to back this up, but i do feel like, in the last few years, we've seen a greater rise of asian[-american] writers being published. who knows, though; maybe i've only noticed this because i've become much more intentional about who i'm reading in recent years, so maybe it’s more correct for me to say that i’m jazzed that i have a collection of books that allows me to curate such a fine stack.

(is that too self-congratulatory? but i do generally stand by my taste.)

it's international women's day, and you might be saying that this stack is so narrow in scope as to miss the point. however, i wanted to make a stack of asian-american women, so here is a stack of women writers who are either immigrants or the daughters of immigrants because the point i wanted to make is simple and universal: that we, under whichever broad ethnic umbrella people want to place and stereotype us, come from a myriad of different backgrounds, carrying so many different struggles and concerns and fears, and one of the things we, as immigrants and immigrant children, bring to this country are our stories.

to be asian-american, to be anything-american, is not to be one collective person from one collective culture. it is to be a myriad of people, to contain multitudes of women, and i wanted to create a stack that would reflect this, the international backgrounds we come from that influence, in so many different ways, the stories we are compelled to tell.

in a political climate under a toxic administration that is feeding and fostering hate against non-white, non-christian, non-straight immigrants, this is what i wanted to celebrate today — that this is a country that has welcomed people from so many places, and this, this stack here is a result of that. i want to point at this stack and say, look, look at this wealth. look at the worlds these pages contain. look at the humanity these books expose. look.

so, here is to us, all of us women, regardless of ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or the physical bodies we were born into. here is to the countries, the cultures, the peoples we come from. here is to the women we come from, women who have sacrificed much so we can be the women we are, women who have shown us strength and love and dedication. here is to the women who have failed us, to the women we will fail, to the women who are broken and fucked up and damaged because they are women, and to be a woman is to be human.

and here is to us. here is to the women we are and the women we are becoming and the women we will be. may we be strong and continue to tell our stories and refuse to be silenced.

looking back, looking here. (10 books i loved in 2016)

January 24, 2017

‘kizzy, i am scared of everything, all the time. i’m scared of my ship getting shot down when i have to land planetoid. i’m scared of the armour in my vest cracking during a fight. i’m scared that the next time i have to pull out my gun, the other guy will be faster. i’m scared of making mistakes that could hurt my crew. i’m scared of leaky biosuits. i’m scared of vegetables that haven’t been washed properly. i’m scared of fish.’
[…]
‘i never thought of fear as something that can go away. it just is. it reminds me that i want to stay alive. that doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.’ (chambers, pei, 243)

january 2017 is almost at an end, and i’m a week into being back in california, and i feel like a ghost, just floating here, going through the motions of living but severed from everything — from home, from purpose, from hope. as the bleakness and homesickness set into my bones, here are attempts to anchor myself to something, to food, to books.

of the 60-odd books i read last year, these are the 10 i loved, that stuck with me over the months. they’re listed in the order i read them, starting with kleeman in january and ending with lee in december, and, if i were to sum up 2016 in reading, i’d say that 2016 was a year of bodies, and it was a year of silence. all ten of these books have to do with bodies in some way, whether it’s the value placed on bodies, the diminishing of people to only their bodies, the utility of bodies, the killing of bodies, the domination of bodies, and there’s a lot of silence thrown in there, too, silence in secrets, silence from god, silence as survival.

it was a year of asking myself how it is we define ourselves, how societies define us in accordance with the role they need us to play. it was also a year of asking myself who i was, what i believed, who i desired. like i wrote in my previous end-of-year post, 2016 is the year i walked away from faith and outed myself, and, in many ways, these are the books that carried me through much of that heartache and fear and anxiety.

and, so, without further ado:

alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harpers, 2015) [review]
park min-gyu, pavane for a dead princess (dalkey archive press, 2014) [review]
becky chambers, the long way to a small angry planet (hodder & stoughton, 2015) [review]
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016) [review]
endo shusaku, silence (picador, 2016) [review]
krys lee, how i became a north korean (viking, 2016) [review]
sarah waters, tipping the velvet (riverhead, 2000) [review]
garrard conley, boy erased (riverhead, 2016) [review]
sady doyle, trainwreck (melville house, 2016) [review]
corey lee, benu (phaidon, 2015) [review]

i kind of don't know where to start with this.

“humans can be so foolish. they don’t realize the light comes from themselves. they think the whole world is lit by a single lightbulb, but in fact a myriad of small lightbulbs must be lit for the world to become a brighter place. they keep themselves buried in darkness while continuing to envy the ones with light. seeing the darkness in everyone else around them, they give all their votes to the ones who are lit. this explains why poor people give their votes to dictators and why average people love the actors on screen. they don’t believe in their own light. they don’t believe
in each other’s light. they don’t hope; they don’t attempt to discover. and that is where the source of the world’s darkness lies.” (park min-gyu, yohan, 128-9)

i suppose, then, here is this: my favorite book of the year was park min-gyu’s pavane for a dead princess. park gives us three twenty-somethings who work in a department store and become friends, and they’re three young people who exist on the fringes of capitalist korean society, outside the desired standards of beauty and wealth. park essentially takes korea to task for its materialism and its singular standard of beauty, and, maybe, there’s a little too much politicizing, too much blatant criticizing, too much theorizing, but there’s also a lot of empathy and humanity in this novel.

korea is a funny topic for me, and my parents ask often if i hate being korean because i seem to hate korean society so. i counter that, no, i actually love being korean, and i take a lot of pride in korea’s history and the strength of her people and the vibrancy of her food and food culture. however, at the same time, korean society is one that is tremendously flawed and heavily patriarchal, toxic and narrow-minded and causing a great deal of harm to its people, to its children and youth. as i keep telling my parents about my relationship with korea and about everything else, the existence of one does not negate the truth of the other, and my heart aches for korea because i do love her, and, in many ways, for reasons both obvious and not, i will always be drawn to her.

corey lee’s benu, titled after his san francisco restaurant by the same name, reminded me of this. lee brings korean flavors and traditions into his food in thoughtful, creative ways, and i was blown away by the care he exhibits for food overall and korean food and culture particularly. he draws inspiration from other foods and cuisines as well, so it’s not like his cooking is solely korean-inspired, but there’s something about the way he’s negotiated his relationship with his korean ethnicity that i found so relatable.

one thing i love about asian america is the sheer breadth of it, how we all have different ways of being asian-american, of identifying with (or not identifying with) our asian heritages, and one effect of that is that i appreciate when i come across people with whom i can relate. i am not trying to say that my way of being asian-american is the “right” or “good” way to be; i don’t believe at all that there is a “right” or “good” way to be asian-american, just that is right and good for us individually; and i’m honestly not one to place that much importance in having to relate to someone. i often think it’s given more weight than necessary and, when applied the wrong way, used to justify a kind of narrow-mindedness, and i rarely ever seek it out, but i do admit that there is a comfort there sometimes — there is something nice about familiarity, after all, and i am not one to deny that.

anyway, benu is this lovely blend of personal history, korean history, and northern californian sensibility, and it is one stunning book. i’d expect no less of phaidon.

my mouth hurt from speaking english. the muscles around my lips and my cheeks ached. in my dreams, voices stretched into long, silly words that meant nothing, and i woke up saying “milk” or “glass” before tumbling back into the sleep of nonsense dreamers. soon i vomited over and over at the side of the road while david reached over and rubbed my damp neck, and then i craved all kinds of things: hot buns filled with pork, cold and briny seaweed, red bean popsicles. the sudden craving was monstrous, like a thing already in my mouth that could not be tasted or swallowed and just between my frozen teeth with a jaw stuck open, and my longing for these foods was not a longing in my stomach but something jammed deep in my throat. (wang, daisy, 58)

while we’re talking northern california: there’s esmé weijun wang’s the border of paradise, which delivers so gloriously on the “holy shit, what?!” side of the spectrum. i love a book that serves a good mindfuck because it doesn’t happen as often as i’d like, and i love it even more when the author does so in beautiful prose.

i also just personally love how i even knew of the border of paradise, so here’s a story, that i somehow stumbled upon esmé and jenny zhang at the same time a few years ago, somewhere on the internets, and i’ve been following them both since. i remember reading esmé’s journal entries about finishing her novel, signing with an agent, trying to sell the novel, etcetera, etcetera, so i was excited when her novel was published last year, preordering it at mcnally jackson and scuttling over once i got the email that it had arrived and was waiting for me behind the desk.

this is the thing that makes the internet a cool place to me, and there’s something really awesome about seeing something through its journey, especially when it’s a book, especially when you’re a writer yourself and this is a dream and ambition of yours as well. it’s also more the case when the writer is someone as vibrant and generous as esmé; she has a book of essays, the collected schizophrenias, that will be published by graywolf in 2018 after winning the publisher’s nonfiction prize.

(none of this has any bearing on my thoughts re: border or its inclusion on this list. i was actually a little nervous going into it because i didn’t actually know what the book was about — there’s a reason i’m not trying to write a summary; it’s kind of awesome to go into it blind — and there’s always the chance that a book will disappoint. luckily, i genuinely loved it.)

(also, if you’ve never heard of or read jenny zhang, please, please, please do; you will be the better for it. she’s written for rookie — here is a favorite piece; here is another — and she also wrote this fabulous piece for buzzfeed after the michael derrick hudson scandal. she has a book of short stories coming out from random house this spring, and i am so fucking stoked.)

so, there are authors you follow for years who write lyrical prose, and then there are authors who are able to create these wonderful lethargic, sticky moods — and i’ve yet to find another writer who does that as deftly as alexandra kleeman. i love the weird places kleeman takes us, and i love her voices and moods — and i say “voices and moods” plural because i also read her short story collection, intimations (harpers, 2016), last year, and i’m telling you: kleeman’s knack for atmosphere is exquisite. her stories are just as interesting and moody as her tones, and i like her as a human a lot, too. there are some authors you just want to be friends with, and kleeman happens to be one of mine.

and now to switch gears a little.

the world, to me, seemed utterly transformed since kitty butler had stepped into it. it had been ordinary before she came; now it was full of queer electric spaces, that she left ringing with music or glowing with light. (waters, 60-ish)

park’s pavane may have been my favorite book of the year, but garrard conley’s boy erased and sarah waters’ tipping the velvet may have had the biggest personal impact.

boy erased is conley’s memoir of his time in conversion therapy after he was outed to his parents (by the boy who raped him, no less). conley grew up southern baptist to a very religious family (his father is a pastor), and he writes poignantly about being gay and christian, about not only the fears and anxieties that come of being gay in a christian community but also about the personal clashes that occur within you when you’ve grown up with god woven into your life and, suddenly, he’s not there anymore.

unlike conley's, my faith is fully dead, and, when i read endo shusaku’s silence, i thought that here was a novel that explained to me why. silence tells the story of portuguese priests who sneak into japan in search of a fellow priest, and this is during a time when japan was brutally suppressing and excising christianity from itself, torturing people into renouncing god and killing them when they didn’t. the narrator struggles with god’s silence to the suffering of japanese christians, to the brutality they must endure in god’s name while god sits silent and does nothing and allows such violence and pain to continue, and, in the end, the narrator, too, must decide whether he will renounce god or not.

no, no! i shook my head. if god does not exist, how can man endure the monotony of the sea and its cruel lack of emotion? (but supposing … of course, supposing, i mean.) from the deepest core of my being yet another voice made itself heard in a whisper. supposing god does not exist …
this was a frightening fancy. if he does not exist, how absurd the whole thing becomes. (endo, 72)

when i think about silence, i think there is a cost for everything, and there is a cost for silence. silence breeds doubt, and it locks you inside your head, with your own fears and anxieties and insecurities. silence leads to brokenness, too, to broken relationships, to loss of faith, and silence is what cost me my faith, years of crying out to god and hearing nothing.

eventually, you start to feel like you must be mad, yelling at the skies and expecting an answer — and, even if there is a god, what’s the point if he won’t deign to engage with you? a world without god, then, is better than a world with a silent, cruel god.

in the end, in 2016, i did have to confront the frightening reality of a world without god — and it is a frightening reality, especially when you’ve grown up with god, when he was built into the foundations of your worldview. god is the basis of hope; it is his existence that allows you to see beyond this life, to “store your treasures in heaven”; and it sounds absurd to those outside faith, outside religion, but, when you grow up in that, when you believe it, live it, practice it for three decades of your life, the sudden absence of that leaves you bereft.

this is what i loved so much about boy erased, that conley gets this. and here is my favorite passage from everything i read this year:

“how do you feel?” my mother said. her hands were firmly fixed at ten and two at the wheel. this vigilance, this never taking a risk when you didn’t have to.
“i’m fine.” we’re all faking it.
“we can stop again if you need.”
“that’s okay.” it’s just that some of us are more aware of it.
silence. my big toe toggling the vent open and closed. with mark’s number in my pocket, i suddenly knew that what i was thinking was true. keeping a secret, telling a lie by omission, made it much easier to see all of the other lies around me. an expert liar was’ merely an expert on his own lies, but those of others as well. was this why LIA’s counselors were so good at challenging their patients, at calling them out? was this why smid and the blond-haired boy didn’t fully rust me?
“are you hungry?”
“no.” i can tell all of this to you later, after the ceremony. i just have to wait for the right moment.
“are you sure?”
“are you hungry?” but i’m afraid you’d be disgusted with me. i’m afraid you’d vomit again, right here in the car.
“a little.” the car turned a sharp curve, a stray pen tumbling out of the cup holder and rolling across the floorboard, a ping as it hit the metal bar beneath my feet. i could have picked it up, uncapped its top, and written my confession right then and there, had LIA’s rules permitted it.
“let’s stop, then.” i realize this now, that all of it might come down to me being afraid. that all of this supposed change is just to please him, to please you.
“i’ll pull into sonic. what do you want?”
“just some fries.” but i’m afraid of losing you. i’m afraid of what i’ll become if i lose you. i’m afraid because i think i’ve already lost god. god’s stopped speaking to me, and what am i supposed to do without him? after nineteen years with god’s voice buzzing around in my head twenty-four hours a day, how am i supposed to walk around without his constant assurance?
“an order of fries, please, and a coke.” beneath the speaker’s static, the clanging of metal in an invisible sink. “and a sonic burger.”
“can i get tater tots instead?” i don’t even know what i would look like to be gay. i can’t even imagine a life where my friends and family would want to talk to me if i was openly gay.
“make that tater tots instead of fries.”
“i’m not really that hungry.” i can do this. i just have to fake my way through until i can take my big risk, whatever that will be. (conley, 222-3)

and then there was tipping the velvet. (oh, tipping the velvet!) i’m slowly rereading it now, and it’s still tugging at my heartstrings in such aching ways. i wrote a giant post about sarah waters in august, though, so i’ll just link to that here.

i also did a compilation of quotes from sady doyle’s trainwreck a few months ago, so i’ll link to that here as well.

i also wrote about krys lee’s how i became a north korean, so i’ll link to that here, too. and i never really wrote about becky chambers’ the long way to a small angry planet, so i can’t link to that, but i loved it and keep recommending it, and i hardly ever read science fiction, so …!

you needed a vision of the future in order to get anywhere; you couldn’t live life thinking you were always about to fall off a cliff. i didn’t want to tell him i would never go back with him to the church: i would be going forward, forward by way of getting back to the kind of life i used to have, only this time i’d live it better. (kleeman, 281)

making pasta is something i’ve wanted to do for a while now, and one of the definite pros of being back at my parents’ in LA is counter space. marble(?) counter space. lots of marble(?) counter space.

i’ve always loved working with dough; it’s one of the most relaxing things i can think to do; and i love the physicality of it. i’m not one who likes using gadgets in the kitchen (i won’t even use a crock pot or a hand mixer), so i do everything by hand, kneading, rolling, cutting, and it has been my saving grace this past week. cooking, after all, has always been the best therapy.

like i said above, i feel like a ghost, and this is how i’m getting through these days. i cook. i think about what i’m cooking, how to get better, what to try next. i think about how i can challenge myself in the kitchen because, for some reason, i don’t doubt that i can try new things, new techniques, more complicated doughs and succeed (or, at least, not fail totally). i believe i’m capable of this, of learning, of practicing, of improving, in ways that i cannot yet believe that i will write fiction again, that i will feel whole again, that i will learn to live with my suicidal depression — that i can be loved, despite all the ways in which i am broken. i don’t have that faith, but, at least, i have a kitchen to turn to, hands to work with, hunger and curiosity to feed — and, above all, i have food.

alexandra kleeman & liz moore!

September 23, 2016

2016 september 16 at powerhouse arena: last friday, i walked over to dumbo to hear alexandra kleeman (intimations, harper, 2016) and liz moore (the unseen world, norton, 2016) in conversation.

i'm a huge fan of kleeman; i absolutely loved both her books (her novel, published last year by harper, is you too can have a body like mine); and i love how atmospheric her writing is, the ways she captures mood and strangeness/weirdness but does so very thoughtfully, not haphazardly. it's easy to get lost in her writing, and i highly recommend both of her books.

alexandra kleeman: the stories in this book started in different ways, but they all started from the grain*, i think.
- * (i think she said "grain." she may not have used that word specifically.)
AK: [“you, disappearing”] actually started from a tweet that i tweeted where i just said, what if the world started disappearing piece by piece?
AK: i think that it’s difficult for me to think about creating a whole plot and organizing it for story. i start with an idea — it helps me feel like i’m learning something instead of investigating a plot inadequately.
liz moore: “choking victim” gave me so much anxiety because it’s basically every fear i’ve had since having a child.
- AK: because maybe you have longer to think about being a mother now than you used to in [that] you have a lot to worry about and think to be prepared for it. i definitely have no experience, and one thing i was interested in with that story was how i could create this situation where this character realistically makes this major mistake. [we’ve all been in situations where we make decisions that are bad decisions, but, at that moment, we think it makes sense.]
- AK: i began from that point [at the end], that plot point in that story and worked backwards to see how to funnel everything towards that.
AK: to write a novel, you have to keep yourself in pretty much the same mental condition, i think. your novel kind of anchors you to time and place. these stories, i wrote over a period of six years, and i wrote them as an escape from the novel. the earlier stories — yeah, it’s changed stylistically. i’ve gotten very interested in making characters with problems that mirror mine more literally.
LM: every time i write something, i feel like i’ve started from scratch — like, what do people say, and what do they look like? i’m interested in personification as a thing you can do to people but you can also do to non-people.
LM: we both have lobsters in our books. we should have done something lobster-themed tonight.

food, bodies, & healing.

September 2, 2016

if you need a gift for a friend [...] and you’re not sure what to get, buy a book. new, old, used, whatever. a world filled with books is a better place for all of us. (new school/old school, "school daze")

it's happened to me, too. people are meant to connect, to empathize. sharing openly has made me a real person in other people’s eyes. i’m no longer just a picture of a cute looking cake. of course, you always lose followers. i remember posting a photo of myself on instagram during my first chemo and i think i lost a few hundred followers. which was totally fine, because they were only there to see the cakes — more cakes, dammit! ha. but the comments on that photo were very meaningful for me. i really felt the support of people all over the world.” (eat my words, "reality bites," 45)

i have a complicated relationship with food — or, maybe, it’s more accurate to say, i have a complicated relationship with my body.

i’ve hated my body for over fifteen years, which is half my life. for years, i wanted to disappear my body, wished it would shrink into itself, and i wanted my body to be something no one would see because, in the world i was raised, i was taught that my body was directly connected to any potential — any future, any relationship, any career would be determined by my body, by the size of it.

koreans have one standard of beauty, and it is one in which a woman must be thin and pale with double-lidded eyes, a straight nose, and a v-line jaw. it’s one in which she must wear makeup and dress a certain way, and, if she does not conform, she is shamed for it, openly and without remorse, by family and strangers both. this is the society in which i was raised (despite having been born and raised in the states), relentlessly made aware of the fact that i wasn’t skinny, told over and over again that i would be pretty if only i’d lose weight, made to feel like my body was a direct reflection of my character and ought to be judged accordingly.

no one escapes from such constant judgment unscathed, and, in that regard, i am no unicorn.

i’ve been in a reading slump as far as fiction goes, so i’ve been reading a lot of food writing instead. part of it is an endeavor to learn more about what food writing is, what i respond to, what i don’t, and another part of it is an endeavor to figure out what kind of writer i am outside of fiction.

another part of it, though, is an attempt to work through my relationship with food, with this mess that it became over years and years of being torn down over my body. it’s an attempt to articulate why i love food, the aspects of food culture (and, specifically, korean food culture) i respond to, and it’s an attempt to allow myself to love what i love and to be bold and unashamed of it.

this is not sponsored, endorsed, whatever by cherry bombe. if you haven’t noticed yet, i have a compulsion to share things i like and am reading — plus, this is sort of like closure. i kicked off this summer reading cherry bombe (issue number 4) and baking a sponge cake, and i’m closing this summer reading cherry bombe (issues number 3 and 6) and baking a sponge cake. it’s been a good summer of sponge cakes.

i cringe inwardly when dining companions use terms like "guilty pleasure" and "indulgent" to describe food. this cultural dialogue pushes women to feel like they’re either eating too much or too little. i try hard to ignore the "good" versus "bad" dichotomy concerning food, and dining alone gives me the space to focus on the visceral experience of eating, and not what anyone else thinks about my choices and cravings. (girl crush, "table for one," 56)

in june, i went to an event where the writer wei tchou read from a piece in which she talked about how she never felt comfortable saying she loved food because she didn’t want to be cast into the chinese stereotype. i didn’t even know such a stereotype existed, but i could understand where she was coming from — for so long, i felt so self-conscious about the fact that i loved food because i felt like people would judge me for it, like, oh, she’s fat; of course she likes to eat.

i used to wonder if maybe my love for food was a reaction to the body shaming. was it because i wasn’t allowed certain foods while on stupid diets like jenny craig or while counting calories? was it because i was denied the desserts and pastries that i found so beautiful and intricate, that i wished i could create? was it because of the way i would be openly shamed, given dirty looks, made to feel guilty for the pall that would settle over the room when i displayed any kind of enjoyment of food?

do i love food because i wanted more of it, or do i love food because i love food, because i love the craft of it, the discipline, the artistry, the way food says so much about us?

for my whole life people have asked me*, “why aren’t you fat?” and i’ve just responded, “i have a good metabolism.” but the truth is i was a really fat teenager and people always said to me, “you’d be so pretty if you’d just lose some weight.” then i had the really good fortune to meet my first husband, a man who likes large women. he looked at my large body and thought it was great. it was the first time i didn’t hear that voice in my head telling me i couldn’t eat. we moved in together and i lost 35 pounds. i was cooking fresh food for him. i’m convinced that when we don’t eat good food we’re so unsatisfied we keep eating more. (girl crush, "turning the page," 66)
* ruth reichl

as it turns out, unsurprisingly, the food writing i love best places food in the world. it’s more about where the food is coming from, who is creating it, how it’s being consumed, with whom, in what way, than it is about the food itself. food becomes almost a detail in a bigger picture, which isn’t a diminishing of food and those who create it — i have huge amounts of respect for chefs, bakers, cooks, like i do for all artists, for all of us who dedicate ourselves to passion, obsession, and craft in pursuit of something worth pursuing.

however, like books, food doesn’t exist in a vacuum. everyone must eat, and we all bring our own habits and preferences to what we eat, the way we eat. we have our own attitudes toward food, whether it’s purely utilitarian or a marker of status or taste-driven, and, in the same ways, we bring our own damage, our brokenness, our hurts to our kitchens and our tables.

food, for me, has been a way of healing and recalibrating. i’ve always been that cliché of a writer who escapes into her kitchen when she needs to work things out in her head — or, maybe, is it a cliché of a human being who loves to work with her hands, who loves how tactile and methodical baking is, how it forces you to slow down, take deep breaths, and think things through? baking is an exercise in discipline, in patience, though my love for baking is never one that’s been recognized as such — people hear baking, and they think indulgence, they think fat, they think lack of control. people hear, i like to cook, and they think, but of course.

to me, though, the kitchen is a place where bodies disappear, where they become things of utility, not things to be catalogued by societal labels. it’s not about what you look like, whether in gender, size, race, but what you can create and why, for whom. by extension, the table, too, becomes a place where bodies disappear, where they become participants in relationships, in community, in culture — and all this sounds so obvious to me, but, at the same time, it’s been a long time getting here, to this place where i can appreciate my body for what it can do, not hate it for what it doesn’t look like.

and this is what i love about the food writing i’ve been reading, whether in cherry bombe or lucky peach or the new yorker — that there is this acknowledgment that food plays a part in everyday life, that food is culture, reacts to culture, shapes culture. that we all approach food in different ways with different needs, whether as professional chefs or home cooks or people who eat and cook and share on social media. that there isn’t just one way to think about food but many because it is an essential part of our lives and, as such, we should think about it, and we should embrace it. we shouldn’t be ashamed to love it.

some books that i’ve loved that discuss food and/or bodies:

alexandra kleeman, you too can have a body like mine (harper, 2015)
park min-gyu, pavane for a dead princess(dalkey archive press, 2014)
han kang, the vegetarian (hogarth, 2015)
esmé weijun wang, the border of paradise (unnamed press, 2016)
lee seung-u, the private life of plants (dalkey archive press, 2015)

four years ago, i moved back to new york city from los angeles, essentially fleeing the place i’d grown up. i needed space to shed the ghost i’d become, space to grow and expand and fit into my own skin again, and it’s been four years of slow, painful progress. sometimes, i look in the mirror and see a monster, but, other times, i look in the mirror and see someone who’s just fine as she is, who has her fears and insecurities and flaws but who also has a heart of her own, a mind of her own, a body of her own.

like i said, it’s been a long time coming, and there’s still a long ways to go, but i’m happy to say i’m getting there.

… donuts, or doughnuts as they were once spelled, are another thing entirely. they’re not baked, they’re deep-fried — crisp and just greasy enough and, at their best, not too sweet. they’re nuggety bombs of decadent toothsome animal deliciousness; they stick to your ribs and give you a zingy kick and don’t make you crash. (new school/old school, "hot potato," 108)