“I didn’t want to add anything to their burdens, not my nasty little back-and-forth with Joshua Messing and the fight we were going to have, and certainly not the encounters I was about to have with Tommy Reilly, who was frightening enough that he seemed to be more a wraith than an actual person, much less a stocky, baby-teeth-missing, ginger-haired kid just one grade above me.” (p. 39)
I’m fascinated by the way that the book continues to reflect a trend that began over a century ago: each new wave of immigrants has inspired good novels about the experience of children living between their parents’ adjustment and their own life in school and out of school. Lee’s book follows the tradition of documenting the challenges of becoming an American. (Obviously, I particularly remember the Jewish immigrant stories from the late 19th to mid 20th century.)
One of the areas of adaptation to American life is always food. Among other Americanizing habits, the narrator’s family went to a restaurant from time to time: “we ate out rarely, usually on Lunar New Year when we went to a nicer Chinese place nearby, or if my parents had a special visitor from Korea, we’d go to the city and have kalbi and naengmyeon at Woo Lae Oak, in those days the only Korean restaurant in the entire metropolitan area.” (p. 132)
Every mother in stories like this has her own version of ethnic food. Mothers in such novels also typically try to produce American food. As in this novel, various sources of food compete, including family meals; the food in the school cafeteria; and in this novel, the purchase of food from vendors like “the Good Humor truck that made its weekend afternoon stop right by our playground.”
Then there’s the very American food: spaghetti. When the narrator pictures himself on a date with the girl he has a crush on, he pictures “sharing a strand of spaghetti at Antonino’s like those lovey dogs in the animated movie,” (p. 311) Not to mention Snickers bars — an utter favorite which the narrator loved; in fact, when his mother visits him at camp, that’s what she brings him.
Above all is the social life of the narrator’s fellow kids, including both American/white children and Asian children. The setting of most of this social life is either the high-rise neighborhood or an overnight camp where the kids from all groups are separated from their families, and divided into the usual assigned groups with adolescent leaders rather than parents. Critical in the plot: the author and his fellow campers and counselors have meals at the camp where a lot of the action is set. About the camp food — “we were thrilled not to see any even remotely Asian-style dishes, thrilled not to taste flavorings of garlic or ginger or scallion, or sniff any kimchi gases.” (p. 182)
Finally, an example that I found interesting is how his mother used food to bribe or comfort him:
“…my mother came into my bedroom with a plate of freshly made gimbap. I was surprised, as her gimbap typically appeared at the weekend picnics we’d periodically have with other Korean families at the local state park, or else on a long car trip, when she’d pass a Tupperware full of the sliced rounds to us in the back seat. Even though it was one of Ella’s and my favorites, a treat we’d often lobby for her to make us, she rarely, if ever, served gimbap at home. Aside from her view that it was ‘traveling’ food, it was something of a hassle for her to prepare the various fillings of the spinach namool, the omelet egg, the pickled daikon, the minced bulgogi, then neatly roll it all up with steamed rice in sheets of gim.” (p. 123)
I looked up gimbap, which I do not recall at any of our local Korean restaurants. The google result:
