Excerpts

Listed in Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2019, as selected by Robert Atwan in Best American Essays 2020.

All week, I’ve been thinking of what to cook. I’m like Paula Deen, pre-diabetes: butter, cheese, heavy cream, and more butter. Chong Suk Ahn, Mom, never cooked Thanksgiving dinner; I’m not sure my father’s family would’ve known what to do with the pungent heat of kimchi, the slickness of seaweed in the back of the throat or the briny rubber of squid. Holidays were left to my grandmother and aunts who padded around the kitchen in house shoes with white, thin soles and told nosy children to go play. They were a different kind of mechanic; with beat-up tin measuring cups, Pyrex dishes and aluminum foil, they laid out a table as if they had taken apart a luxury car. Turkey, ham, macaroni and cheese, greens, sweet potatoes, potato salad (no raisins), chitlins, rolls, butter beans—the thighs of my corduroys were already rubbing together. Besides a left-hand turkey made of construction paper and glue, I’m not sure mom even understood Thanksgiving.