Lunchbox: The Taster Issue (Vol. 3 Issue 2) - Spring 2024

The TASTER Issue

Date Table Guests Server V3ISS2

APPT - SOUP/SALAD - ENTREE - VEG/POT - DESSERT - BEV

Aiya ASIA E-Board

Jennifer Chan

Phoebe Chan

Ning Chen

Isabe a Chiu

Rita Chun

Saya Elisofon

Kaitlin Harne

Carys Hirawady

Claudia Ly

Sophia Nazareno

Amelia Oei

Urja Patel

MEg Rady

Guest Receipt

Date Table Guests Server V3ISS2

STAFF

Co-directors

audrey silalahi

lauren ishikawa

Editorial

*MegGy Grosfeld

*Meg Rady

PHOEBE CHAN LILY FARR

ANJELA DE GUZMAN

VINCE KUNAWICZ

Design Visual Media

*ISABELLA CHIU

*ARIS LIANG

Ning CHen

AYAANA NAYAK

*NAOMI ASH

*CARYS HIRAWADY

HAILEY BOCHETTE

JENNIFER CHAN

VINCE KUNAWICZ

KIYOMI CASEY

VIVIENNE LAM

URJA PATEL LILY FARR

Marketing & CommunicationS

*AYAANA NAYAK

*ABBY LEE

LILY FARR

AMANDA LI

ANJELA DE GUZMan

ayesheh jasdanwaa

avanika lefcowitz

*managers

A B L E

Beyond Kajus

Urja Patel

His Grandmother’s

Kitchen

Ning Chen

I threw a rock in a river-but the burned remnants still found me

Aiya

Meg Rady 12 14 18 20 24 28 30

Temper Tantrum

Carys Hirawady things you can’t pack (in to-go boxes)

Phoebe Chan

Sik Fan Lah

Jennifer Chan

Happy Birthday

Aversion

Amelia Oei

Winter Song

Saya Elisofon

My Experience in Boston’s Chinatown

Isabella Chiu

A Little Ode To Life

Rita Chun

Cultivating Home in a Faraway Place

Sophia Nazareno I

When Audrey and I were brainstorming themes for this semesters’ issue, we were really interested in an issue dedicated to telling the story of the multitude of emotions embedded in the Asian and Asian American experiences. The pieces in this issue beautifully capture the complexity of our collective experiences. In this issue, you’ll get a taste of the sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, sourness, and spiciness. One of the things I love most about this issue is how our contributors have connected their experiences to the food of their culture.

I would like to thank all of the incredibly created, talented, and passionate individuals who made this issue possible. Thank you to our contributors and staff who continue to inspire me with each issue. Thank you to our hardworking department managers— Isabella, Aris, Meggy, Meg, Ayaana, Abby, Carys, and Naomi—we couldn’t have done this without your dedication and support.

LETTER FROM THE CO-DIRECTORS

Lastly, I want to thank my amazing co-director, Audrey. Working with you this past year has been an incredible journey. You have taught me so much during our time working together and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you. I will sincerely miss our cafe sessions, dinner and brunch “meetings,” and late night proof runs. Thank you for everything.

To our readers, thank you for picking up a copy of the Taster Issue—It is one I truly savor, and I hope you will too.

LETTER FROM THE CO-DIRECTORS

Well, here we are, diving fork-first into another delicious issue of Lunchbox. Our theme for this Spring is “Taster,” and we’re taking a deep dive into food, tastes, and its relationship with emotions.

In this issue, we’re exploring the myriad ways in which food can evoke emotion, stir memories, and transport us to far-off places. Taster blends the diverse flavor palettes of food with the intricate tapestry of human emotion. This issue goes beyond the culinary realm, and explores the nuances of different emotions… anger, frustration, joy, and more.

But perhaps the most exciting part of this issue was seeing everyone’s interpretation of Taster, all of our contributors and staff, have given their twist and flavor to our Spring 2024 issue, and we cannot wait to share with all of you!

As I sit down to write this letter, I can’t help but feel a twinge of bittersweetness. This marks my last issue as Editor-in-Chief of Lunchbox Magazine, and I must say, it has been a ride. Serving in this role has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to connect with everyone at Lunchbox, and to you, our readers.

I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to express my deepest gratitude Lauren, my fellow co-director. Lauren, thank you for your

tireless dedication, your unparalleled passion for all things Lunchbox. Working alongside you has been an absolute joy, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in all of this!

As I sign off for the final time as Editor-inChief, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to each and every one at Lunchbox, especially our managers, Meggy, Meg, Isabella, Aris, Carys, Ayaana, Abigail, and Naomi. None of this would have been possible without all of you. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve as your co-director, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes us all.

So here’s to good food, good friends, and good memories. May your plates be full and your hearts even fuller.

Beyond Kajus

Urja Patel

One of my earliest memories is stretching my arm out to our pantry’s top shelf in search of cashews, or kajus. Every day after my hot and dusty bus ride from school, I would run into the pantry hoping to find my drug at the time, and as always my parents would outsmart me by moving around the container of kaju. They quickly realized that this could be a useful bribe and if it were too accessible for me, I would soon lose interest, which ended up happening anyway. I was happy and satisfied with kaju and at the end of the day, I would relay my kaju pantry adventures to my sister, telling her how this time the container was completely out of reach and I had to swing from one corner to another like Tarzan to get my kajus. However exciting and adventurous these moments were, they too passed like everything. Soon, kajus didn’t excite me. I felt bored with the same taste over and over again, so I started discovering other wonders stored away in our pantry, like methi khakhra, chakris, mamra, and other wonderful tasty, dry snacks that the pantry had to offer.

Seeing my growing interest in food, my parents introduced me to other flavours, cuisines, and snacks from all over the world. Kajus lost their first-place spot in the imaginary hierarchy of foods and were replaced by samosas, chaat, pickles, Thai curry, sushi, and more. All these new flavours and

exposure excited me and always encouraged me to learn new things. I would approach a new food with an open mind and a scrunched-up nose to smell what was presented to me. I would often hesitate to try different flavors, but then my sister would be the brave one and do it. And like every younger sibling, if my sister did it, I had to do it.

These small adventures of our foodie family continued as I kept exploring food, wondering how I could have been satisfied with kajus when I hadn’t even tried such wonderful other flavors that were around. A similar wave of emotion came over me when I moved away from home for my studies and discovered this entirely new world that was unknown to me. I explored new places, foods, and museums, interacted with people from all over the world, and built relationships with people I thought I had nothing in common with.

Looking back at my life in my hometown feels a lot like my obsession with kaju. I was happy and satisfied with it ‘til I tasted the new world beyond kaju. My hometown served as a great exploring ground which just made the realisation grow that there is a whole world out there. And with a scrunched-up nose and brave determination, I moved away from home. I do think about kaju and miss it. Still, I am so enchanted by the samosas, chaats, and sushis around me that I realize that I am where I am meant to be: trying out different flavours of life, growing up, and being a brave foodie adventurer. I, too, urge you to go beyond your kaju, and discover the wonderful flavors that the world beyond the familiar offers.

His Grandmother's Kitchen

Ning Chen

The real estate agent leads him up five flights of a narrow, circular staircase that spirals forever upwards—the ceiling like a pin needle poking the heavens. He wonders what it’s like up there, hidden in the clouds, but he’s stuck on the lower levels with the creaky floorboards and tiny windows that only face the frowning fire escapes of neighboring concrete buildings. Curse his past self for scheduling a tour so early on a Saturday morning. If only he could time travel an hour into the future when this whole mess is over with and he could melt into his dorm bed once again, ignoring the impending doom that lurks forever over his shoulders. But the rent is cheap, and the apartment is close to a subway station, so he follows the real estate agent upwards and hopes the light switches work.

He nearly crashes into her when she stops before a blank wooden door. She gestures enthusiastically, her bright red lipstick and pointed nails cheering, “Welcome to your new home!” The door creaks with mocking laughter as she wrestles with her keys.

The apartment is dark and dreary and smells like dust, but the light switch works, and she lets him look around.

He feels like the lone customer of an empty retail store, wandering through the aisles and trying not to pay mind to the shopkeeper who’s pretending not to be watching him. His footsteps follow a slow, agonizing rhythm as he walks down the hallway, passing by empty rooms like he’s window shopping, focusing more on maintaining a pleasant demeanor rather than interest in the apartment. The hallway is long, not unlike the hallways of his family friends’ houses he waited in as an awkward teenager, or of the empty houses he had to visit as a kid and hoped his parents wouldn’t buy, or of all the dorm buildings he rolled his four suitcases down, hoping he’d packed enough of his life with him to live for the next few months. He steps into the last room of the narrow hallway and turns on the lights. He walks into the kitchen.

But it is his grandmother’s kitchen.

With sunlight streaming through the translucent curtains, revealing glimpses of the rolling hills outside. The dining table is shoved into the corner of the tiny, tiled space that smells like dust and orchids. There are bowls of fruit sitting upon every counter, each one lovingly picked from the garden she had been cultivating for decades—a practice she had gotten into after immigrating to San Francisco and after finally getting enough money to buy a house. He wonders if she used to garden back in China, or if her country was too shaken up from war and occupation for anyone to tend to the flowers. He puts on the slippers that sit at the door—soft green ones she had deliberately set out in preparation for his visit—and goes to make eggs on the gas stove. She reads the Holy Bible, translated into Chinese. She wants to have her grandchildren all gathered under this holy roof of hers, if only for a moment, but his Cantonese is too poor to tell her he needs to be on his own.

He finishes the eggs and goes to wash the dishes. His grandmother stops him. She says she’ll take care of it. He leaves.

When he enters that hallway again, those rooms that once seemed so empty are whispering for him to enter like the fragrances of Hong Kong street food stands on a wintry evening. He hears laughter and the clinking of glasses in the living room, and it’s his cousin’s living room, filled to the brim with family members he doesn’t know, has never known, but who know him because he’s his father’s son, and they know his father much more than he ever has. He can smell the celebration of Christmas set out on the dining table, the heaps of steamed fish and roasted duck and stir-fried noodles tossed with bok choy beckoning him to take a bite. And though they’re devout Christians, their ancestors lounge about the space, resting their heads on the red altar hidden in the quiet corner next to the fireplace. He never quite understood the logistics of placing oranges on the little plates, so he sits quietly and eats his food. The room rings with the sounds of Cantonese and 台山話, the tongues of his family members moving seamlessly between the two. He wishes he could speak his family’s languages, but by the time he was born, his sister’s preschool had already cut out her Chinese tongue and replaced it with an English one, so there was never any hope for him anyway.

The party winds down, and he goes to leave, but not before his aunties shove leftovers into his arms. He knows it’s Chinese tradition to deny the gifts at first—an act of humility—but he always thought that was a little silly. He walks into the hallway with a pile of Tupperware, the plastic warm in his hands.

The bathroom is across the hall, and it is the bathroom of his 婆婆’s apartment in Hong Kong, his matrilineal line running through the pipes. The sink, shower, and toilet all sway around each other because when he was last here, he was nine years old and feeling homesick for the first time. The homesickness bleeds from the walls now, impossible to be scrubbed away. His mother gives him her phone to call his father, who’s still stuck at work across the Pacific Ocean, and they talk for a bit. He doesn’t remember what he says or what his father says, but he thinks he feels better afterwards. At the end of the call, he goes to find his mother. He remembers that she’s at the funeral of her father, his 公 公. The phone feels heavy as he puts his father on hold. He sinks his feet into those soft green slippers and takes the phone and Tupperware and enters that hallway once again. It buzzes, filled with the adrenaline of his family line. It’s the same hallway he used to wrestle his sister in when they were younger, back when they still enjoyed fighting each other. It’s the same hallway his mother would carry him down after falling asleep during a late-night road trip. It’s the same hallway he and his father played soccer in, and that his father and his late uncle used to play soccer in before one of them kicked the ball too high and killed the light.

He stumbles to that final, unopened door—the bedroom door—and he’s desperate to turn its handle and see what lays behind. Will it be his parent’s old bedroom, the queen-sized bed like a pirate ship on the Pacific? Or will it be his sister’s room, where he used to sit and read as she played violin—an instrument that all the children of the ChineseAmerican diaspora seemed to fit comfortably under their chins, except for him. Hell, even give him the guest room, whose closet holds boxes upon boxes filled with beaded figurines crafted by his grandmother.

But if he’s lucky, if the ancestors that run through these walls have mercy on him and deem him worthy, let him see—at least a glimpse of it—his childhood bedroom. With the cozy walls that would cradle him asleep. With the soft carpet that he could lay upon and see glow-inthe-dark stars overhead. With the sturdy desk that welcomed doodles of cartoon characters and whispered to him that he would make it someday. Let him see his room once more, and he’ll be content. He’ll sign the lease. He’ll get the real estate agent her pay. He’ll tend to this space like a loving caretaker, placing slippers at the door and cooking meals for his guests. He opens the door. It’s empty.

There’s not even a bed frame. He recalls that this apartment comes unfurnished. At least the light switch works.

The hallway is dark and cold. The real estate agent looks at him expectantly, her cheeks trembling from how long she’s been holding her smile. He looks at the exit behind her, but his feet don’t move.

“幾時可以再見你?” his grandmother would always ask whenever they called. When can I see you again?

The only light in the apartment now shines from the kitchen, illuminating the space like a halo that’s slipping further and further away, returning home to the rolling hills of San Francisco. His feet pound on the floorboards like a panicked heart, the rooms of the hallway merely doors to nowhere spaces that pass by in a blur. He runs. He sprints. His hands touch the door frame, and his toes touch the entrance of his grandmother’s kitchen.

His grandmother, his 人人, looks up from her Bible and smiles as he pushes the Tupperware towards her, the food still warm from Christmas.

“ 唔 使,” she says. No need.

Because she’s Chinese at heart, no matter how many miles she moved from Guangdong, and he’s an American boy with his body split by an ocean of time, so he stands there with the Tupperware digging into his palms. He gently sets the phone on the table, his father still on hold, and nudges it toward her because he knows she will always take the chance to speak with her son. She squints at the screen as her aging eyes search for the right button.

Hundreds of words like flowers grow in his throat, words that he could never fully choke out but he has a whole lifetime to try.

“多謝,” he says. Thank you.

She seems a little confused but smiles anyway.

“ 唔 使.”

She takes the phone off hold and begins chatting away with her son. Quietly, he places the Tupperware into her fridge and slips off those soft green slippers, leaving them at the entrance of his grandmother’s kitchen.

He walks back to the real estate agent. She asks him if he’s interested in the apartment. He tells her.

I threw a rock in a river — but the burned remnants still found me

Aiya

the bitter saltiness of soy leaves a deep scar on my tongue never enough—too much can’t bear the measuring cup I’ve been fitted to a serving spoon too large for the bowl I’mmixing

medium high is a mandatory setting I’ve been taught to apply for balance but these spices that dip and dive and bind to the sugar that’s meant to comfort me make me unable to cater to the strict recipe I’ve been given

I dip my spoon back into the bowl and stir up

mother wife friend star anise ginger spring onion before the amber red of Shaoxing wine bleeds into the pages of my present 2000 years of ingredients I’ve inherited and yet I cannot find myself in the produce aisle or spice rack thefadedcharacters ofmybirthright

are why white pepper onion and scallions become italian salad dressing soggy rice beside the bok choy middle platter of unspoken conversations and broken cookie crumbs on a napkin scribbled with ai would I still be fated to crave the last drop of egg of a soup known for soothing — or will I just keep finding empty half bottles on a shelf wondering if the ingredients would taste any sharper if I weighed more than a mung bean allergy?

when no one’s watching I fold in another layer of wonder and taste test Maybe — if I’d had a grandmother what would I savor? into“eggflowers”

Temper Tantrum

Carys Hirawady

things you can't pack (in to-go boxes)

Phoebe Chan

1. mochi

I run my hands over the familiar glass windows and beige wood of Fugestu-Do’s mochi and manju displays. Beside me, my younger sibling, Ella, tilts their head at the cashier helping us select our desserts. Ella points to the glass at a pretty, pink mochi decorated with a green sweet-jelly leaf.

“Can we get two of the pink kiku, please?”

The cashier nods and adds the desserts to our steadily growing box of mochi.

My sibling turns to me, that head-tilt softening as they stare at me expectantly, eyes round and dark brown. I’ve always found them cat-like when they’re like this: overly polite, masking any hint of their normal sass or sarcasm while we navigate the outside world, an environment where social expectations hold our individual value hostage.

It’s my turn, though, so I turn to the cashier with my best, respectful smile and request, please, “if you wouldn’t mind, we’d like two of the suama and three shigure, please.”

We take turns politely picking out our delicate, little desserts. When the box is wrapped and placed carefully into a to-go bag, we exit the shop with courteous bows and calls of “thank you!” to the shopkeeper and the cashier.

But as soon as we get home, the masks come off. The box is set on the table and opened in a hurry of ripped tape and flimsy cardboard. Cornstarch from the mochi, sticky rice cake, and thick, sweet-bean fillings coat our dinner knives and fingertips as we split and share each mochi and manju in the box. Ella and I fight over the last quarter of suama, getting bits of it stuck to our fingers as we split it again into two eighths—a messy, hand-pulled compromise.

Here, where no one watches but those safe enough to be imperfect in front of, we make a mess and drink our tea and slouch in our seats. My sibling puts their foot up on the cushions of their chair and hugs a leg to their chest like a half-perched gargoyle, eyes wicked and sharp as they lobby a playful insult my way.

“You’re a little shit,” I tell them bluntly.

“I’m the younger sibling, it’s my job to be a little shit,” they shoot back, smiling as they steal a bite of my dessert.

I gasp, indignant, and they laugh, teeth still coated in red bean and sticky rice. It is messy and imperfect and sticky-sweet.

2. zhū jiăo mièn xièn

“Long noodles for long life,” my grandmother tells me as she puts the bowl of stewed pig’s trotter and wheat noodles in front of me. To the side, there’s a rŭ dàn , a soy-marinated egg. I stick my chopsticks right down the middle of it and work them apart to split the whites and yolk into manageable bits, dipping each one in the sticky glaze pooled beneath the pig’s trotters.

“Thank you, A-Ma,” I say. She smiles, wrinkles creasing at the corners of her eyes. I can smell her sunscreen and eye cream as she presses her hand to my shoulder and leaves me with my meal.

It’s a quiet, gray day in December, and I have just turned sixteen. On either side of me, homework and textbooks and pencils litter the worktable. The semester is drawing to a close, and with it, so are all of our assignment deadlines and mid-year exams. For weeks, I have been treading water with stones tied to my ankles.

But for a moment, none of that matters.

There is a bowl of zhū jiăo mièn xièn in front of me. Its steam hits my cheeks and makes me feel soft and young. It smells like so many Decembers past, like savory-sweet soy glaze and traditions stretching far beyond the horizons of my comprehension.

I place my soy-dipped egg on top of the noodles and twirl my utensils until I have formed the perfect bite. It sits like a nest at the end of my wooden chopsticks.

I tuck in and close my eyes, warm and at peace.

3: kbbq

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” I beg, my face falling to my hands. I pull away from this position just as fast, worrying that I’ve just smudged the eye makeup I put so much effort into doing before I left my house. My friend Ashley snorts indelicately and points her metal chopsticks at me. Her flowy, blue dress and high heels look out of place here, surrounded by open grills emanating the smell of marinated meat and charred vegetables.

“Someone take a picture! Look at her!”

The other two seated at our table, our friends Athena and Dylan, whip out their phones and delight in my misery. Athena—always the most fashionable out of the four of us—is clad in her ruched, black dress and sporting matching nails and immaculately curled hair. Consequently, she also looks the most out of place here, in this casual, waiters-in-rolled-sleeves-and-t-shirts Korean barbeque restaurant. Dylan doesn’t fit in much better: he’s in a black corset and a gold bow tie. (This probably speaks to all of us, colorful and overdressed and far too loud for our own good, trapped in our conservative little town on the outskirts of LA’s suburbs.)

It is May of 2021, and we are having our off-campus prom. The four of us, thinly masked misfits who clawed our way through most of secondary school by sheer willpower and lack of sleep, have spent the better part of the past twelve months neglecting our Zoom classes for an extra few hours trying to make up for all the sleep we missed back when school seemed to matter.

Nothing seems to matter now, as we sit in a circle on these chairs low

to the ground and munch on bits of grilled meat, burning our tongues as they come fresh off the sizzling metal latticework. Nothing has mattered very much in the wake of all the chaos that was the previous year. Nothing has mattered very much at all since we got our letters of acceptance to various institutions, and steadily planned out our next four years. Everything that did matter has already happened— the essays were written in a circle much like this one, on the floor of my living room, the election followed via Tiktok, and our AP exams taken, for the second time, via school-issued laptops.

Since then, life has been drive-through prom and last hurrahs. Summer plans and promises to stay in contact when we are inevitably separated by our new schools. (We don’t know this yet, but we’ll keep those promises. Prom dresses aren’t the last outfits those waiters-int-shirts will ever see us in.)

“I’m hopeless,” I say to my friends, about the boy that I like— whom they are currently teasing me about. “I’m going to be in the same time zone as him next semester, though.”

“You have terrible taste,” someone chimes in. Probably Athena. “You could do so much better.”

“I know,” I tell her, laughing. “It’s not like it matters.”

And I know it doesn’t, because nothing really does, apart from the smell of sizzling meat and the four of us seated in a tiny circle, colorful and overdressed and far too loud for our own good.

Happy Birthday

Meg Rady

As the cake is brought out, I fight back tears. Gloria sits across from me with a big grin on her face. I'm not great with kids, and I think it shows, so I spare myself any illusions that Gloria sees me as the cool aunt. I'll leave that up to one of my sisters.

The room erupts into a chorus of "Happy Birthday"—off-key, of course, because what's the point of actually singing it well? Defeats the spirit of it, I think. All the kids are excited to dig into the cake with marshmallow frosting, and to be honest, so am I—especially since Corin torched the peaks, creating that perfect burnt marshmallow taste—but all I want to do is get up and run to the bathroom, cry it out there.

Hurt would be too simple a word because, in that moment, Gloria has everything I never had at four years old. Her quaint little life is splayed out under the big suburban home, celebrating turning four with her family and friends, unperturbed by a looming identity crisis, while my life hadn't truly started yet. So, instead of letting my tears fall, I sing along.

I hadn't really believed it then, until that night. Articles upon articles, firsthand accounts, and professionals; they all said the same thing. Adoption is a form of trauma. Well, maybe I knew, but I didn't really want to accept that I could fit into the category of "adverse childhood experiences." I knew something was wrong when my parents would pull out the home videos, still on DVDs, and I could barely stomach watching my older sisters running around in onesies full of all that baby fat. They'd be building sandcastles on the beach, running around our home, all smiles and giggles. I hear the stories from my family, watch them burned on discs, and I tell them as if I'd been there, like a firsthand account.

But I'm not in the home videos.

And it's not simply because I am the youngest of four, no. I was stuck waiting on the other side of the world until I was four and a half. You won't find baby pictures of me hanging on the walls of our home or in our scrapbooks tucked away on the shelves. It's almost as if I just— poof—came into being one day in the body of an awkward and shy fouryear-old. I hate that during the birthday party, for that brief moment, it was jealousy I imagined keeping the candle on the cake aflame.

That same jealousy rekindled again in college. It was early freshman year, around October, when my second roommate was moving in. I knew when I first got the email that she was a Chinese international student. Part of me was scared that she'd see me and try to converse with me in what was supposed to be my native language. Thankfully, that did not happen, but regardless, that familiar pain still burned in me when I heard her invite her friend over to help her unpack, and they were speaking to each other in Mandarin. I couldn't concentrate at my desk because in my head, I kept wondering, imagining what it would be like if I spoke Mandarin—if I was so intimately connected to my native culture. It reminded me how close I am to everything I want, everything that was stolen from me, my blood right, taunting me. I often ask myself if I deserve to be labeled with a hyphen when you can peel back the layers of me, and all you would see is white.

If only it were that easy.

The first time I struggled to identify myself as a person of color, was my sophomore year of high school, and applications for the Student Diversity Leadership Conference, SDLC, at my school, were opening. SDLC is an annual national conference where students from private schools come together to discuss matters of equity, diversity, and social justice. Only six students would be selected from my school to go. With my background, I knew I wasn't really qualified to speak on the POC experience, despite two of my sisters having attended the conference during their time in high school. I thought, what could I possibly contribute? But with encouragement from my family, I took a leap of faith. I applied, and I got in!

On the second day at SDLC, we split into affinity groups, which were focus groups where students of similar identities gathered together. I remember the shock at seeing the words, TransracialAdopteeAffinity typed out on the group list. Despite the girls next to me talking in hushed tones, asking each other what the term "transracial adoptee" meant, I'd never felt so acknowledged.

The affinity groups met twice throughout the three-day conference, which never felt like enough time. While other affinities had hundreds of students, we were a small but mighty group of twenty united by our experience as transracial adoptees. We talked as if we were all old

friends, sharing our experiences, eager to share with an audience who could finally empathize with their struggles. Every now and then, our group chat activates again.

It's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I'll never forget sitting at lunch with my friends during one of my years of high school, and one of my friends, who is Korean American, told us that her older sister thinks Asians who were adopted "don't really count." It was only in hindsight I realized how much that hurt.

As the Asian American community rallied together amongst the onslaught of anti-Asian hate violence perpetuated by COVID-19, it was heartbreaking to wake up too often to news of the repeated acts of violence and hate crimes against those who looked like me. Thosewho lookedlikeme , because, yes, I was a part of that community regardless of my upbringing, which can't truly be reflected on my skin. I could have been the target of any one of those attacks. For all that I felt white, no one was going to treat me that way, and to think otherwise would be foolish.

To me, though, it seemed the real fools were people like my ski instructor. Me and my best friend, Allie, were taking a group skiing lesson up in Winter Park, where we would occasionally drive up to spend the day in the mountains. Our instructor was this man named Art: white, middle-aged, a little eccentric. Allie and I were probably the only students under thirty in the small group, but we didn't mind. Early on, Art gave the group some directions, and my friend asked him to repeat what he said to clear up her own confusion, and in response, he turned to me and said, "Please tell her in a language she understands." Confused by his request, I relayed his directions to Allie again, in

I was only fifteen or sixteen, but I wasn't naïve. I wanted to laugh at his blind insinuation of us being grouped with Asians who grew up with their culture nurtured into them by their own families. Later, when we were on the ski lift, Allie explained to Art that her mother was white, and so was her father, and yet she was Chinese. A very confusing concept for him to grasp, apparently, but I managed the lesson without making a fuss.

We didn't take another ski lesson.

I dreaded bringing friends over to my house when I was younger. My friends were all blameless, and my parents always welcomed guests, but I was worried that I'd see their confusion, see them trying to put the pieces together when my very white mother opened the door. To this day, I've yet to witness a visceral reaction to any of my friends meeting my parents. That is in part because I try to soften the blow subtly (sometimes not so subtly), to preface that I was adopted. I guess you could call it a precautionary measure to soothe my own paranoia.

Although, I specifically recall a time in middle school when I invited a couple of friends over to my house—who had already been over numerous times—and I briefly left to use the restroom. Right as I'm about to return, I suddenly hear, "You have a white cousin?" My friend, Caroline, who had just seen my dad pass through minutes before, was caught in utter disbelief at my white older cousin passing through my kitchen. My friends and I all burst out laughing because, out of all my friends, that kind of ridiculous comment almost made sense coming from Caroline. When I asked her why she reacted as if the Earth had tilted off its axis, she simply said she "forgot." Recalling the incident is more comical than anything, and it's wasteful to harbor any anger toward something so nonsensical.

Still, it's fair enough to justify my slight apprehension when I moved into my freshman dorm a couple of days early for pre-orientation— which I was already hesitant to apply for, considering it was for students of color and international students—along with my suitemate. I was glad I would not be alone navigating the school for the first time, but she would be meeting and seeing my mom and siblings before I truly knew her, and that's what scared me the most; I couldn't control my environment, nor would I have adequate time to gauge her reaction. As usual, my worry was misplaced, and my suitemate turned out to be amazing.

Orientation is also where I first discovered the term TheBigThree. The Big Three apparently refers to one's sun, moon, and rising signs, whatever that means. I was vaguely aware of the terms individually because my mother used to be big on astrology. She'd lay out all these books, and my sisters would flip through the books, reading off the biographies of the different zodiacs, seeing if our personalities aligned with the archetypes. I never dug deeper than that, but my sister was the stubborn optimist, insisting that we could find our rising signs even though we didn't know what time we were born. She came to

some conclusion that I can't recall anymore, but I didn't care. It was all speculation, all it will ever be.

Maybe I would care more if I knew the truth.

My birthday is like Schrödinger's cat. Alive and dead, both potentials equally weighed if you keep the box closed. August twenty-sixth may well be a lie or the truth, but there is no way to know, no way to confirm because it’s a box I can never open. So the (un)truth slips out easily: August twenty-sixth.

I was no stranger to invasive questions about my adoption, but college continued to surprise me.

I was sitting down with two of my friends over a fresh bowl of ramen, whom I had only come to recently know during my first semester at college when they popped the question.

"Do you like being adopted?"

Never had I been so taken off guard, stunned into silence. It was such a loaded question. Where to even start with answering a question like that? I knew I wouldn't be able to provide a satisfying answer, regardless of their intentions in asking, but I didn't want to give any answer. Disbelief clouded my mind in that moment, making me unable to come to any coherent response. It was only in hindsight I realized that the disbelief was masking something else: my anger. That kind of inane question didn't dignify a response, however pure their intentions. I was so sure the question came out of ignorance, and sometimes ignorance is not to be blamed on the individual. But when I mentioned this to some of my adoptee friends, they reminded me just how deserving my anger was.

I'm not sure I will ever be able to answer that question. But I do know that being born and not merely having already existed in a world surrounded by others who can recount your birth for you is a privilege often taken for granted.

Aversion to Spice Aversion to Spice

Amelia Oei

I am embarrassed that I don’t like spicy food. I get nervous going to Asian restaurants with friends, even though that is half of my ethnicity. This summer, my friends decided that we should eat at one of these restaurants—majority rules, I could not object.

We sat down and glanced at the menu. I ordered the least spicy dish: fish tacos, with all of the sauce on the side. They were delicious. My friends ordered the opposite, the spiciest dish: the restaurant’s signature noodles. A server brought out our meals. My friends’ dishes smelled so good. I begged for a bite, wondering if I could keep my unusual intolerance a secret. Carefully, I dug in.

My tongue swirled around the taste, dancing to avoid landing on anything dangerous, but unwillingly tangling itself in the noodles. I immediately cursed myself for falling for the trap. The tantalizing smell lured me in, slowly hypnotizing my taste buds, before attacking my tongue with a sharpness that forced me to chug any liquid close by. I was hoping for the bondage to loosen its grip on me, an escape.

My friends noticed my struggles and laughter ensued.

“Wait, but you’re Asian!”

Although just a joke, it brought the assault to a deeper level, a harsh jab at my passive identity. Did they know that I had been thinking the same thing for nineteen years? How could I consider myself Asian if I could not even eat the foods associated with the culture? Palates aren’t genetic.

My dad was born in Indonesia, raised by his Oma and Opa until immigrating to the States early in his childhood. After assimilating into American culture, his recipes from home were the only apparent tether to me and my siblings’ half-identities. My favorite meal is his Oma’s chicken adobo. Warm chicken

marinated for hours in a sweet sauce that has to be bought from Super Cao Nguyen, the local Asian supermarket, served with hard-boiled eggs over white rice. I find myself salivating at the thought of the delicacy, urging my mouth to be filled with the sweet and savory mixture. I fill my mouth until it is ready to burst, but I don’t choke. I eat more and more and more. My siblings and I also developed a taste for jasmine tea, vanilla ice cream, and Lemper Ayam. Instead of spice, we fell in love with sweets. Not just the awesome tastes, but the associations behind them—they proved that we belong, that we are not outsiders unable to find a place in either half of our genetic makeup.

I do not eat spicy food, but why does this little fact have such a huge impact on the validity of my identity? What do my friends see? The proof is in my eyes, my skin tone, my other physical features, and my last name, never pronounced correctly by strangers. I am a full person, filled with complexities that have a larger range than the tastes in which I indulge. Why should I have to prove it myself, too?

If taste for food is dependent on genetics, surely my friends would understand. Nature vs nurture? They too have their own taste preferences. So why do mine seem so complicated? Darwin speaks of natural selection in the process of evolution, arguing in favor of the need for a tangible tether to understanding who we are, what we come from, and why we are here. He also speaks of a human need to belong. I couldn’t agree more. Yet at home, with family, we never explore what being mixed is, how we are part of a multicultural system. We know we belong to our little family, but what more? The rest of my family doesn’t have a specific preference for spicy or sweet—we just like what we like. But the unspoken implications of food seep into my life regardless. Because Dad lost the ability to speak in his native tongue, we learned to depend on food to fill our mouths in place of a language lost.

I need to learn my Oma’s recipes. My cousin, Gus, who is also half-Asian, has started a record of her favorite things to cook from back home: nasi goreng, satay, bihun goreng. But how do we capture the memories, the sense of belonging in a simple instruction?

Apinchofsalt,enoughthatitremindsOpaofhismother’s.

I am not sure if my siblings struggle with the same existential identity issues. Again, we don’t really have conversations about understanding who we are. We don’t analyze the flavors of the food we eat, we just eat it. Most of the time we order takeout, not home-cooked meals. Perhaps this is a reason for my confusion—we haven’t made strong identifications with our half-identities; I depend on spice tolerance to

battle the perceptions made by others. Is fighting with the perceptions of the self from others inevitable, especially as a person of a certain ethnicity? I find myself wanting to articulate others’ perceptions of me constantly. I want to be more Asian, or more white, instead of finding solace in the wholeness and depth of my multiculturalism. I am both, and my preference for external factors is exactly what makes me me.

Sometimes I call my dad to ask him the names of his favorite foods, the food we eat together. Most recently, I asked him why I didn’t like spicy foods. Like he would know.

“You’re weak”

Haha, good joke. Another jab, but this one didn’t hurt—he knows that my aversion is not to blame on anything, it just is the way it is. Taste preferences are different for everyone, and their unique blends are what make food interesting and good. When I try a new food, I expect dimension and intricacy in the flavor. I do not target only spicy or only sweet foods; nothing is ever black and white. I enjoy the depth of my identity, too. Ultimately, the spiciness of food one likes is entirely up to them, independent of others’ preferences. My unique blend of backgrounds allows me to have freedom when exploring other foods and cultures too. Sure, I don’t like spicy food, but that doesn’t have to alienate me from my own identity.

Ethnic and cultural identity goes much deeper than food alone, of course. I know this. Still, coming to terms with the fact that I don’t like spicy food—a characteristic of many Asian dishes—has been a complicated journey, especially when trying to place myself in others’ perceptions. Sharing meals with my siblings and cousins, I know that taste is different for everyone. None of us speak our Oma and Opa’s tongue from home, but we eat the food that brings them there. This is family, this is culture, this is identity. We share the same stories, yet our experiences are uniquely our own. We share the same food, and our takeaways are different too. Sharing meals, stories, and ideas brings me closer to an understanding of self; avoiding spicy food does not drag me away.

I suppose the weight of the little jabs about my dislike of spice manifests through my own fears. I’m certainly not afraid of eating spicy food; I love being introduced to new foods all the time. Rather, the fear stems from the implications. If I cannot indulge in this aspect of my culture, there is a risk of disconnect—a loss in culture, in community. But these fears are not grounded: I am not onlyAsian, so I do not have to be afraid to lose that. I can instead lean into it: my two halves, my wholeness. I

never fully belonged to only one culture, so I do not need to fear losing one or the other. I belong to both. I am both. I like foods from both.

On another phone call with my dad, I asked him bluntly how he dealt with the cultural divide we both find ourselves stuck in. To my surprise, he felt no internal conflict; I’m the only one stuck in an invisible partition.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you feel so divided. I think my multiculturalism allows me to be open to other cultures. I love trying new foods from all over the world. I don’t think of it in a negative way,” he told me.

In typical Dad fashion, his unforeseen response worked as the advice I needed. My multiculturalism is like a superpower: it allows me to view the world with a unique lens. It moves me to write pieces like this. It calls for new connections, ideas, and inclusion with those who share similar experiences. It empowers me to have moving conversations with my dad, among others.

So maybe disliking spicy food is embarrassing, simply because my tongue can’t handle the heat. But the quips and jabs from friends no longer hurt me in the guttural way that spicy food burns through my intestines. The food still hurts, but the connotations don’t.

Winter Song

Saya Elisofon

Tillie met Greg the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, twelve hours before her flight home. They’d matched on one of those dating apps for young people, and she’d almost denied his profile, except she was half asleep and slightly drunk on Moscato that had almost frozen because she’d set her fridge to the wrong temperature. After messaging each other for a few days, they decided to meet in Union Square to go on a proper date. Tillie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a date with someone. Usually, she would just sleep with them, and maybe they’d get pastries or fast food together afterward, if they were both hungry, then she’d sleep with them again.

That night, she met Greg at a bench in front of the subway station in the park, where men were calling out for chess partners, and the air smelled deeply of sulfur and the incoming cold. She was nervous that she didn’t look as pretty as she did in her pictures or that her voice sounded too deep for her face, but when he arrived, he didn’t show any indication that he thought either of those things. Immediately, Tillie picked up on how he emphasized the “t” sound at the end of his words. Thought. Right. Tonight. A month later, they would be talking about their childhoods, and he would tell her that he had a speech impediment that never truly got fixed, and she would tell him she adored it because she did.

They walked to the West Village, keeping distance between each other like strangers do, and neither really opened up until they had two drinks of their choice at a too-small, too-loud Italian place. They’d frequent the spot throughout the rest of that winter; it would be where he would introduce her to his best friend. The two boys would laugh together about inside jokes and refer snidely to a girl named Megan Day, whom Tillie had never met but would later come to realize was the exgirlfriend—a title she would never get herself but one she wanted so dearly for reasons she never quite knew.

On the walk back that first night, they shared a cigarette, and he told her stories of his time at college. Tillie thought he was actually one of the only people she’d met that she’d like to know. She took Greg back to her apartment: a large single bedroom on the fourth floor of a rundown building near a small park, where single mothers and nannies would

bring their screaming toddlers to play before school or daycare. She liked to watch the women in the morning, with their dark hair in buns and their abundance of plastic bags strapped to strollers, laughing with each other and occasionally looking over to the monkey bars. Nothing would satisfy her less than a life like that, and yet, she ached for it. The routine, the cold air on her face—a reason to get frostbite that wasn’t just self-destruction—because when you have someone to take care of, it can’t be classified as self-destructive at all.

Now, with Greg, a little after eleven o’clock, they talked for a while and then had sex. And even though she wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, she did it anyway. He left her place about five hours before she had to leave for the airport. The next time she would see him would be a week later, and she’d be so happy to be back in the city and away from her family that she wouldn’t care if he wasn’t so nice to her.

When she was twenty years old, Tillie had a friend named Kate who practically consumed her. The girls met in a class vaguely about the politics of gender and had run into each other a few times at damp, dark dorm parties. Tillie would always pretend to be intoxicated enough to hug her, and Kate would let her, and during her first September in Boston, Kate was the one girl whom she felt a hunger for.

They’d begun seeing each other alone in October, for coffee or to watch movies with intertwined, prickly legs. Kate always wore her dark, curly blonde hair in a bun at the nape of her neck as if she wanted to focus just on her, and only her. When she did this, it would make Tillie’s stomach hurt for a reason she couldn’t quite place. She couldn’t eat or even think about food without gagging, but Kate never seemed to notice. That’s how it would always go. Tillie was forced to study the other girl as she ate her sandwiches, burgers, pasta, sushi, or whatever she fancied that day, while her own stomach consumed itself.

On the tenth day, after the girls had declared they were best friends, they were in the library while Kate was reading On Photography , but Tillie was overcome quickly by the need for the girl to stop, suddenly insatiably hungry for just one look, one moment of her attention. That is when she asked Kate how she had broken her leg when she was seven. She finally looked at Tillie, in the way she wanted her to, but she didn’t answer, not then. She just looked, and Tillie felt her stomach grow two inches and then shrink four. It almost hurt, and the grumbling was loud in the silent room of students at work. Kate went back to reading Susan Sontag, but Tillie couldn’t focus the rest of the night. It had ruined her appetite.

Later that winter, Kate smoked a half pack of all-natural cigarettes and told Tillie that it was the week her nanny had quit when she snapped her leg clean in half. She had a balance beam in their backyard— somewhere in Illinois—and her nanny would always catch her when her cartwheels didn’t land quite right. Her dad was watching her that week before the new nanny started, and he didn’t know how to catch her, or even watch her for a slip. She slipped and fell and broke her right leg, but it was fine because her dad took her to Blockbuster afterward and everyone was jealous that she got to ride in the elevator with the vice principal.

The girls lived together their last year in Boston, though they spent the most time together in the first year. They couldn’t get enough of one another, even after months of breathing the same air, kissing the same boys, and occasionally, each other. Tillie helped Kate move out of her dorm because she had to bring all her stuff to storage, not back to Illinois. It took four hours in the scorching May sun, but together, they were able to do it. Afterward, they finished a bottle of cheap chardonnay, avoiding cork chunks that had splashed in the wine when they butchered it with their keys. Kate spent the night in Tillie’s bed after complaining about an ache in her leg, and Tillie had no space to lie flat, but she didn’t move her, nor did Kate offer to. She always made space for Kate, and Kate took it. She took the side closest to the wall, the better side, without hesitation, just as she always took her time to eat, while the other girl just sat there, stomach rumbling, eyes on fire.

Tillie and Greg saw each other for less than five months, though she would look back on that time of her life with an assuredness that she was deeply in love with him. He never took her on another nice date after the first one, but she convinced herself it was enough to stay in, meet his roommate, or sit on his balcony watching him smoke expensive weed. They’d talk about traveling together to Croatia, or even a day trip for her to meet his parents in Connecticut. All of these plans never happened, and as any girl would, Tillie blamed herself for loving greedily. She figured she must’ve consumed all the love he might have had for her, and licked the plate clean. She never thought it possible that he might just be a bad guy, or a boy who never grew up, and it would be years before she realized such.

With Greg, love happened quickly, and deep down she knew it was wrong. Her friends at the time—acquaintances from her first job in the city—never understood why she would continue to refer to him as one of the great loves of her life. However it turns out they didn’t know much about Tillie, and in fact, these friends never heard about Kate at all. Maybe if they did, they might see why she thought love was

supposed to look like days of arctic silence and half-assed phone calls while he watched poker games. And maybe they could have told her she was wrong. But they never heard about Kate, and never would, and no one could take Tillie away from Greg, despite their efforts.

Tillie thought a lot of Kate in the days after college, and the days after Greg left her. She tried to remember every detail, but it was impossible. She knew they were in her brain, somewhere, and maybe if she drank, kissed, or slept enough, she’d find it, but she never did. She just kept remembering the same night. December, their junior year. The girls —or Kate, rather—had decided going out on a Thursday night was much too juvenile; they were old now, Kate said, so they better start acting like it. Instead, on Thursdays, Tillie would walk to the other girls’ apartment, about a mile from her own dorm. Every time she arrived, Kate would have a new piece of decor from some expensive place like West Elm or Anthropologie, and Tillie would take a mental or literal photo to remember what to buy when she grew up too. This specific night, they watched The Virgin Suicides for the umpteenth time, with Kate’s older medical school roommate politely stepping in and out of her own room, large headphones drowning out the college girls babbling. At the end of the film, neither girl was shocked by the suicides or the audacity of the teenage boys. They ordered curly fries from Jack in the Box when the feeling yet again struck Tillie. It hadn’t happened in a long time, months at least. However, when she watched Kate’s fingers, covered in grease and orange seasoning, reach for fry after fry, Tillie felt her own stomach churn under the girl’s gaze. She didn’t realize she was nervously pulling at her own brown hair until a piece of it landed atop the pile of curly potatoes. She watched it fall as if in slow motion, spiraling down and landing without a sound. And that piece of hair, a part of her still, laid lightly on the top of the fries, while Kate reached in, bringing it to her slightly open, crumby lips. Tillie could only nauseously watch as her best friend, or maybe the love of her life, at a piece of her hair as if it were the most casual thing in the world. It was, Tillie told herself, because it was an accident. But she couldn’t help thinking otherwise.

It is late January now, warmer than it should be. Tillie listens to soft folk music while she waits for the doorbell to ring. He could be in the building right now, and he probably is. She doesn’t have a doorman to tell her these things, and it is only in moments like these that she wishes she did. Tillie waits and when it finally rings, she is still shocked even though she was expecting it.

“I don’t like your haircut,” she says.

“Thanks,” he replies. They hadn’t seen each other in about nine

months. When he asked her to come over, she said yes, but she didn’t know why.

“Why’d you ask to come over?” she asks.

“I honestly don’t know,” he says, slightly smiling. She sips her lukewarm tea, and it makes her think.

“What happened to the mug I gave you for your birthday?”

He pauses for a second, eyebrow raised. He doesn’t remember.

“Luke uses it a lot,” he says, finally. Ah, Luke. The roommate.

“You don’t use it?” she replies.

“It doesn’t hold that much liquid,” he says. He’d said the same thing when he’d opened the box a year ago.

“I feel like I got you another gift as well.” She tries to remember.

“No,” he says, “just the mug.”

“The mug that you don’t use.” He waits a while.

“Did you invite me here to berate me?”

“That wasn’t the plan,” she says.

“Was there a plan?” he asks.

“I mean, there are things I want to talk to you about.”

“So you’re just going to yell at me? About the things I did?”

“I’m going to tell you how I feel about the things you did.”

“You did! When you were calling me incessantly the week after Saint Patrick’s.”

“Incessantly? I called you twice.”

“And I was in class. Classes where I needed to focus—”

“You couldn’t say that? You couldn’t shoot me a text saying, ‘Hey, I’m in class, but I’ll call you back when I’m done?’”

“I did call you back,” he tells her.

“You called me when you were at a party, and proceeded to call me a burden.”

“Great. If you’re just going to yell at me, I’m leaving.”

“You always yelled at me,” she says.

“I never did.”

“You may have not yelled,” she says, “but you were never nice to me.” Greg says nothing as he slowly scoots his chair back, preparing to leave.

“You never complimented me. You never even told me you liked me.” He slings his bag over his shoulder. He’d never even taken his coat off. Tillie thinks he must be sweating by now, and she wonders why her mind thinks of his sweat in a moment like this.

“You begged for all this attention,” he replies, standing up now. “I’m not that kind of person.” She laughs to herself.

“I’m not,” he repeated.

“I know,” she says. And she did know. From the beginning. He slips on his shoes and heads towards the door. Her apartment is small, so he is still so close, even on his way out.

“I’m sorry for berating you,” she says instinctively and insincerely.

“Don’t apologize,” he says.

“But I am sorry.”

“Me too.”

She wonders exactly what he’s sorry for, and she remembers now that she’d also gotten him a candle for his birthday. He lives in a university-owned apartment for graduate students, though, and he probably would never burn a candle at risk of getting a citation. Now she feels bad again and, after he leaves, she sleeps until nine in the evening. When she drinks her bottle of white wine that night, she thinks about doing it with him. And with Kate. She thinks about the ways that everything fell apart; in ways that were her fault and weren’t, but she surmises that most of them were.

The next morning, she will hear the sounds from the mothers and kids in the park. She will look at them—first the women in the cold January air, but happy and content in a way she has never been but will try desperately to be through empty men and girls who love her in a way that sucks that marrow out of her bones. She will look to the children, and she’ll be reminded of sitting on swingsets with Kate, and to distract her from that, she’ll jump to the memory of the Italian bar, only eleven blocks from her place now, where she’d fallen in love with the idea of who Greg might turn out to be. A few months later, she will see on Facebook that Kate got engaged to someone from college whom they used to laugh about. Many years after that, she will see Greg with his arm around a blonde woman heading into a hip new Asian fusion restaurant on MacDougal Street, and for a minute, she won’t remember how exactly she knows him, and then she will. She will remember it all.

She will be acutely aware that she won’t ever forget these things, these people, and she will try not to mind, but it will eat at her. It will eat and gnaw and tear until she is nothing but a skeleton. She will be just a remnant of burning love, the wick of a candle long burnt out.

My Experience in Boston's Chinatown

Isabella Chiu

I like to think that I have a very spoiled palate.

Growing up in the Bay Area—San Jose, CA, specifically—tremendous and fantastic food has never been hard to obtain for a reasonable price. It didn’t help that my parents were foodies themselves and insisted that their children develop their palates young. While it took some time, I could enjoy most cuisines and foods.

So it’s safe to say that when I tasted the food at the DH for the first time, freshman me was flabbergasted at the state of the food served. Thankfully, Boston’s Chinatown was a mere two blocks away, and I have since set my sights on trying what the local area has to offer.

After three years of living in Boston, below are a few of my go-to spots that my friends and I frequently enjoy!

Isabella’s Order

My Thai Vegan Cafe

• Roll Sod with Peanut Sauce (hold the carrots for friends who are allergic)

• Pad Thai with Tofu

• Pad See Ew with Tofu

When it comes to a large and filling vegan and vegetarian meal, look no further than My Thai Vegan Cafe. This is a spot that my friends and I frequent when we can; we often come for three dishes and three dishes only: roll sod with peanut sauce*, pad thai with tofu, and pad see ew with tofu. It is a rather basic order, but when eating out, I don’t often stray from my typical order unless accompanied by friends willing to explore and do things in the family style.

If you’re seeking out this restaurant, do not be intimidated by its entrance. The cafe is located on the corner of Beach Street. and Washington Street., on top of Phở Pasteur. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you are face to face with a set of narrow stairs lit by bright LED lights. When you reach the top, you’ll be greeted by a quiet and dark cafe adorned with plants in all four corners, giving the ambiance of a rainforest. The wait is never long, and you’ll always be quickly seated. I recommend checking this spot out if you are in the mood for Thai food.

*For those allergic to carrots, ask to hold the pickled carrots and daikon.

Isabella’s Order

Banh Mi Huong Que

• #6 Banh Mi Thit Heo [Pork]

• Thai Iced Tea

• Vietnamese Iced Coffee

As a certified sandwich fiend, I am always on the lookout for exciting and tasty sandwich shops. However, if you were to ask me what my sandwich of choice would be, it would most definitely be banh mi. If you’re in the mood for a $7 banh mi and a large Vietnamese iced coffee for only $5, look no further than Banh Mi Huong Que. Located on Washington Street, this little shop is two doors down from Jia Ho Supermarket, showcasing a small green sign and a foldout advert of the food. The shop is pretty tiny, so it’s takeout only; however, they guarantee freshness, as everything is made to order. I enjoy lemongrass pork the most, but lemongrass beef is also pretty tasty!

Hack for eating: Make sure to crunch up the bread before you eat, or you risk crumbs going everywhere!

Isabella’s Order

Pin Ming

• Jasmine Green Milk Tea with Boba and Grass Jelly, 50% sweetness and 50% ice

Boston’s Chinatown has no shortage of boba shops. A quick look at Google Maps will show various locations, with some stores right next to each other. Yet, Pin Ming has a special place in my heart, with memories of late-night travels for boba with friends and a startling first impression. More on that later.

If you’re not in the mood to walk too far into Chinatown and are looking for a consistent and reasonably priced boba, look no further than Pin Ming. I recommend ordering your boba on the Snackpass app since if you accumulate enough points (7 to be exact), you can get a free drink. My usual order, which is rather plain, is the jasmine green milk tea with boba and grass jelly. Since I don’t like my boba to be too sweet and don’t want them to water down my drink with ice, I do a fifty-fifty method: half ice, half sweetness.

All right, for those interested in a brief story, stick around longer: It was just before the start of freshman year, and an acquaintance and I were searching for boba places in Boston since we were both new to the area. Google Maps recommends Pin Ming because of its close proximity and decent ratings, so we went. The store was small but cute, adorned with posters advertising the latest drinks and a poster board stuffed with messages left behind by previous patrons.

So we ordered our drinks and sat and chatted for a while. Once we finished our drinks, we were on our way out and reached for the door. It didn’t budge.

I had my acquaintance try to open the door. Once again, it doesn’t move.

At this point, the staff were laughing, whether at us or something else, I’m not sure.

“Hey, the door might be locked.”

So, one employee comes over and tries to open the door.

Once again, it won’t budge.

“Give me one moment.” The employee says as she reaches for the phone.

A little while later, the door is unlocked by the manager, who had accidentally locked everyone inside.

“I guess they wanted us to stay and endlessly buy boba from them,” I joked, but that experience had shaken me, to say the least. I have since forgiven Pin Ming for that first impression, and after a year of avoiding the location, I steadily became a frequent customer. The first time I went back around was with my friend, who showed me that you could get free drinks through the aforementioned app, Snackpass. Now, I’m not one to be picky with boba, and I know few who are silly enough to pass up a free drink. I returned to Pin Ming as I grew tired of walking through Chinatown just for boba, and it had become a part of my lunch/dinner routine if I was grabbing food in the area. If I were getting a banh mi from Banh Mi Huong Qi, I would likely walk up Washington Street and take a right for a quick boba fix. Convenience is a significant factor in why I chose this location, but I recommend visiting if you have the time, as it is still a decent boba spot if you need a quick fix.

I hope you have enjoyed my brief reviews of my go-to locations in Chinatown. I still have many locations on my “to-eat” list on Google Maps, so this piece is only a tiny fraction of what Boston Chinatown offers. My opinions can vary from yours, but if you believe I have it all wrong, I am always open to exploring new locations and trying new spots.

Overall, I hope you can go and try some of these places. I hold a special place in my heart. And I sincerely hope you enjoy the food as much as I do!

A Little Ode To Life

Rita Chun

Honor Him.

This is a song by Hans Zimmer, a film composer. I listened to it on Feb 28, 2024, just two days before the first of March.

Honor Him.

On March 1, 2024, I started writing a book, which began as an homage to my paternal grandfather, and became a deeper exploration of my struggles with borderline personality disorder, bloodline, family tree, fate, religion, and what it means to be alive right now, in this world, amidst old ways and new ways. (And howwe can live better, love better. Because at the end of the day, theory doesn’t matter until it’s applied.)

My paternal grandfather passed away in South Korea on May 23, 2022— the day after my 20th birthday.

I was in Hong Kong, sitting in my living room with my friend Brandon. I had been in an agitated mental state for the past few months. We were drunk.

Then, my dad texted the family group chat (in Korean): Grandpa just passed away.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even feel anything.

I said, “Bruh, what am I supposed to say?” I felt detached and strange, and guilty that I didn’t feel much of anything. I didn’t feel that my grandpa and I had been particularly close, and he had been slowly entering paralysis for the last five years of his life. We had been expecting him to die sooner or later, I thought. It wasn’t a huge surprise.

Though, deep down, I did feel a bit shocked. So I laughed. Brandon gave me a funky look and said, “Bruh, you a demon.”

I straightened my face. “Ok, but what do I say?”

Brandon had been a bit of a hooligan in high school, and dropped out to pursue the culinary arts. I didn’t expect him to say anything meaningful. But his words were wise: “Say what you feel like saying. There’s no right answer.”

“But what do I say?” Really, I wanted to ask about the time of death. Nobody in my family had died before, and it felt significant to know the time. But it felt rude, like morbid curiosity. I didn’t even want to text Areyouokay?to my dad, who was in Korea on a business trip.

“Say, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“But… I’m not sorry.”

“Don’t say anything, then.”

“But I feel bad.” I thought Brandon might be exasperated at this point, but he was very patient with me.

“Everyone deals with grief differently. It’s okay.”

I felt uncomfortable in my heart, like I was avoiding feeling like a failure; I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, even send a small text of consolation. My mom came to the living room and asked me if I saw the text. “I did,” I said, sounding weirdly irritated and dismissive. My mom left. I felt bad.

My role was so clear—to be sad—but I didn’t want to play it. It felt insincere.

I asked Brandon if he believed in God, expecting him to say no. His dad’s Jewish, but I knew for sure Brandon didn’t believe in God—or so I thought.

“It’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s that Goddoesn’t believe in me.”

At that moment, I thought that was the saddest thing he ever told me.

After Brandon left, I kept thinking of that phrase. “It’s not that I don’t believe in God, it’s that God doesn’t believe in me.” What the hell? I thought. Isn’t a God-person relationship symbiotic?

Back then, I was an atheist, though I did have a brief stint of calling myself a “spiritual nihilist/absurdist” earlier that year. I was born and raised Catholic and devoutly believed in God until I was fourteen, in freshman year of high school. I had transferred to a new school in Hong Kong, which coincided with a year-long freshman-only boarding program in Hangzhou, China. There, I became totally depressed and self-diagnosed myself with borderline personality disorder. It was tough being in a new school and being away from home. I made good and terrible memories there. But on God: I remember one especially turbulent night, crying in my tiny dorm bed, thinking: “God has forsaken me.”

My mom, sister, and I video-called my dad and my grandma the next morning. They were in Namhae. Namhae literally translates to Southsea , and it’s a small seaside village in the southern part of South Korea. That’s where my grandfather lived his last days, and that’s where he passed away.

It was mid Covid era, and there was a mandatory two-week hotel quarantine law for travelers, so we didn’t fly out for the funeral. I was secretly relieved. I had no idea what I was supposed to do or say, or if I was able to do what I felt expected of me.

As we all prayed together on that video call, I remember feeling like I was falling into a role. A part of me just wanted to go back into my room. I felt a terrible pain in my heart: guilt and grief. I cried bitter tears.

After my grandfather died, I stayed at home for about a month. I was still pretty depressed and directionless. Nothing much had changed. But I did argue a lot with my mom. I kept blaming her for all the reasons why I thought I was messed up. I blamed her for my BPD; I said I had been copying her DNA, her behavior. I brought things up from years and years ago. It was a lot of arguing, blaming, conflicting memories, hurt feelings. I even claimed she never loved me. She was angry and hurt.

It didn’t have much to do with my grandfather. It was all about me, me, me. I couldn’t see anything beyond that.

One day, I was feeling especially down, so I came out of my room and asked my mom: “Who am I?”

And she told me who I was. “You are so beautiful and talented, smart and special. And when you speak, people listen. You always had this special skill since you were small. You can do anything you want to, Yea Se.”

And I said, “That’s not true.” But I was smiling. Even in denial, I felt consoled.

She said, “It is true, because you are my daughter. When I was a kid, in PE class, I was so good at long -jumping. The PE teacher would ask me to demonstrate for the class. I could run fast on the track. I wanted to go to Ewha Women’s University (the most prestigious art school in Seoul). My parents laughed at me and said, No way. But I got in; the top score of the incoming class. For the entry exam, I painted my artwork so fast that I had spare time to sneakily help my friend. We both got in. I chased my dream. No doubts—I just did it. Tapestry. Textiles. Fashion. Costume design. Remember, when your dad and I met, he was just an accountant. I was one of the head Costume Designers at SBS (one of the largest TV networks in Korea). You can do anything, Yea Se. You can literallydo anything.”

I was awestruck. “What? Really?” Even though I knew all of these stories separately, I had been so busy thinking about myself, being depressed, and not knowing what I was doing with my life that I had stopped believing in myself. Now, I was intrigued by my mom’s story. She seemed like a superhero.

My mom nodded. “Yep. Anything.What do you want to do?”

“Uh! I don’t know.”

“Just think. In five years, what do you see yourself doing? Think of it, and do it now.”

“I wanna be a writer. But before that, I have to—”

She cut me off. “No. Just do that. Now. Go write.”

I was beaming. “Mom, I think you just opened my third eye.”

My mom laughed. “What’s that?” (She’s Catholic.)

The next day, I went and saw Everything Everywhere All At Once with my friend, Jerron. At the end of the movie, I cried so much. My friend was like, “I think I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really get it.” But for me—I was rewatching what had happened to me the night before. The exact mother-daughter moment. The love. The realization. I was feeling it all over again.

I was so inspired so quickly. I kept talking to my mom. I started asking her about God. She said, “I’m glad that now my prayers have been answered.” Since I was fourteen, I have been struggling with depression, substance abuse, suicidal ideations, and had a serious attempt in 2020. My mom had been there through it all, driving me to school, taking me to therapy, being with me in the ambulance, taking me home from the psych ward, trying to help me manage my destructive tendencies, trying to understand what was happening to her daughter, and praying for me.

What she said really made me believe in the power of prayer: setting an intention and putting it out into the world through a quiet, solemn heart. Allowing things to be, while trying your best to do what you can. I was like, Oh my God. I believe in God again.

That summer, I read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (my favorite book of all time). In response, I wrote TheLittleAngel , a children’s illustrated story about a little angel who doesn’t feel that her blessing-abilities are enough. The story goes: The little angel is a very small and tired angel who has to bless something three times more than a normal-sized angel in order for the blessing to be effective, and her efforts are unseen by Suzie, the little human she guards. I read it to my mom, and we cried together. I also created Writers Bloc, which is a community for writers at Emerson.

Now, I know it was all my grandfather’s spirit, helping me and guiding me. Now, I see the truth in spirituality, Hinduism, Judeo-Christian religions, Islam, philosophy, gravity, mathematics, and the white hole theory. It’s just that language, culture, and time makes it all seem so separate. Really, they’re all connected. Different pieces of the same puzzle. It all relates to humanity—what we believe in, how we live, where we’re going, and how we’re going to get there.

When my grandfather died, his spirit became my guardian spirit. I prayed to him, prayed for his peace. I dragged my dad and mom to a special weekday mass that the church had for the recently departed. Iwas dragging themto church—even as a devout kid or a nihilistic teenager, I used to say I’d rather die than go to church—and it wasn’t even Sunday. We printed out a photo of my grandfather and placed it by the altar. I prayed, I prayed, I prayed.

But it’s not like all my problems magically went away. Between my grandfather’s death and the moment I write this, I still have suffered from suicidal thoughts, extremely painful emotions, mood fluctuations, isolation, not believing in anything, depression, and doubt. And before his death, I still had amazing days where everything in the world made sense. There are always bad days and good days. There are always mundane, boring days. But sometimes, it’s like I can see the world so clearly. I know I’m doing exactlywhat I’m supposed to do. I was meant to be here, at this time, in this place, typing these words on this screen. I was meant to feel all that pain, so I could grow stronger and learn how to power through, to help other people power through, to help the world in the ways I can.

There’s no use blaming the past—and it’s okay not to make meaning out of the past, either. What’s important is to do what you need to do to keep going. Keep living, keep trying, keep loving, and accepting when you get hurt. Be kind to yourself, to other people, to the world. Keep your heart open, and share your love. Keep saying what you mean, even if it makes you way more vulnerable. If you get hurt, let your wound bleed. It will clot, scab, scar. Spend time alone. Grieve. Yearn. Open yourself to the world, again. Go, go, go. Go live. Living is anything, as long as you’re alive, you’re living. There’s no manual. What’s important is your inner compass. Do what you want to do. Do what’s fun. Do what’s scary to try. Be brave. Do what you must do, even if it sucks or is boring. Be safe. Do what you love, no matter how crazy or lame or embarrassing or cringey it is. Do what you love. Do it, do it, do it.

Cultivating Home in a Faraway Place

How I Came to Love Filipino Food

Sophia Nazareno

My first memory begins like this: sweltering, humid air. A faint, cool breeze from the corner of the living room, the fan blasting at its highest setting. Kids sat on a couch, watching some cliché, horror movie on Netflix. I place my head against the armrest, lounging lazily, my eyes fixated on the screen. I feel at ease despite the gore of the film. My cousins are beside me, either watching with me or preoccupying themselves with their phones, texting or liking posts on Instagram. Suddenly a patio door slides open beside us. I watch as Dad pokes his head in. “Kids!” he declares loudly, “Food’s ready, come eat!” He doesn’t need to shout, but he’s excited. Our family always gets excited when there’s food.

Steam hisses from the barbecue as the sun rises at high noon. The smell of smoked meat wafts through the backyard as Tito Glenn, the head of the household, cooks on his grill. Each of my cousins grabs a paper bowl, filling it with rice before making a beeline to the grill, ready for their share. “Here, Sophie, let me prepare one for you,” Dad says. Everyone always claims he “babies” me. I guess this statement is a bit justified since I’m twelve years old and completely capable of doing things myself. But I don’t mind if my dad wants to help me out occasionally.

He makes me a bowl. My first bite of the pork-pepper-onion-rice mixture is magic. It’s sour and savory and crunchy and greasy and full of goodness. Wow, I think to myself, you couldn’t find this back in Jersey. This is the first time I’ve ever eaten sisig. In fact, this is the first memory I have of eating Filipino food, almost 3,000 miles away from home.

I treat California as if it is a sacred place. The way I see it, the weather is always sunny, and the food is always fresh. Most importantly, this is where family always comes together. Trips to the Golden State began when I was around eight or nine. Because Tito Glenn lived there, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the family flew out to visit during the holidays. My younger self was astounded by this new, uncharted

territory. Everything was calmer, compared to the hustle and bustle of New Jersey. It was relaxing, warm, and inviting, enticing my younger self to open my eyes and embrace this new region. The itineraries would play out as such: our family would gather in the mornings for breakfast, explore the city in the afternoons, and regroup in the evenings for dinner. My parents and I would separate from the others occasionally and head to the 85C Bakery Cafe, where we’d stuff ourselves with unlimited amounts of bread and sweets. It was paradise, at least in my eyes.

My love for this place also reestablished something else in me: my love of Filipino food. I couldn’t explain why, but I had the growing feeling that Filipino cuisine on the West Coast tasted so much better in comparison to anywhere else I’d ever been; I couldn’t even explain why. All I knew was that the sinigang was just the right amount of sour, and the lumpia contained the perfect amount of crunch. Everything just tasted more vivid and everything had more color. My favorite memories are especially rooted in late summer nights, sitting with my family outside of local Filipino restaurants as we ordered nearly everything off the menu. The evenings spent at Gerry’s Grill and surrounding areas were some of my favorite parts of our trips to California.

It’s crazy to think about how food can bring you back to the memories you hold closest to your heart, how it can teleport you to the places you feel the most comfort in. I take a bite of sisig, and I’m instantly back in Tito Glenn’s house, sitting on the couch in the tiny living room, surrounded by cousins, my dad opening the patio door, calling us out to eat. It’s a beautiful, rare sort of thing. It’s remembering the love of food passed down onto each generation, surrounded by the people you cherish, cultivating a sense of home in a faraway place.

I

Am Not Your Justaposition I Am Not Your Justaposition

Kaitlin Harness

There is a specific awareness indicative of being colonized, the kind I was born into. It’s an intimate part of myself I will never be separate from, because existing in the context of my culture is surviving the impacts of its colonial history. But sometimes, I forget. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in the United States, where being Asian-American is complicated enough in its own contexts. But when I moved to the Netherlands as a part of Emerson College’s Kasteel Well program, I couldn’t help but remember and recognize. My education and curriculum have encouraged me to confront the tensions of my identity. I am learning, and this has exposed to me a multitude of complexities of self; who am I allowed to be in a post-colonial country of colonizers who often choose to ignore the effects of their colonization?

They told us the Dutch made efforts to acknowledge their history as colonizers and to prevent the erasure of history.

They told us this, without saying much else. We were brought to the Amsterdam Museum, where only half a wall was provided to display artwork and objects that recognized the Netherlands’ colonies. The paintings and figures, along with the blurb that recognized Dutch colonial actions, oversimplified an extremely long and horrific colonial past. This display sat among others heralding the rise of Dutch society and arts, which could not have been possible without that aforementioned long and horrific colonial past.

The wall space dedicated to this display could never provide the room needed to demonstrate the scale of Dutch colonization, how it destroyed more than a Vermeer or Rembrandt could ever compensate for. There wasn’t even enough room for them to display six letters spelling out the word: Taiwan. A museum dedicated to the history of the Netherlands, and they couldn’t find the space to remember the 50 years that they occupied my home country, depleting our natural resources for sugar production and other industries—the 50 years they spent murdering and exploiting the people there for their own economic gain. They call this time a part of their “Golden Age,” taking pride in their expansion; but to the rest of us who carry the history of their oppressive systems, there is nothing “golden” about this era.

In Amsterdam, I found myself in the courtyard of a quiet university building while exploring the city. Its brick walls were unremarkable, but as I looked up at the windows, I noticed a familiar insignia welded onto the facade: VOC, the Dutch abbreviation for the East India Trading Company, spelled out in bent iron. Standing there, in what used to be that Company’s headquarters, I felt like a ghost.

There aren’t enough physical remnants of Taiwan’s colonization to be evidential. Manifestations of our history don’t take shape as much as they remain invisible, a phantom weight even after direct colonial pressures ended. We don’t have big, stately buildings left, no marks left in metal. While they remind themselves of their “golden” age, our oppression is forgotten. In this absence, I remember.

I remember as I travel through Europe, as I study its art and its culture. I remember even as I stand in awe of a towering cathedral, even as I admire the brushwork of a masterful painting. I remind myself that the things we are taught to find beautiful, impressive, and worthy of praise arose in all their glory from a society that could afford to produce them by building itself off the oppression of other people and places.

The echoes that resonate today do not allow me the privilege of forgetting. I remind myself that we are taught to find these things beautiful and impressive and worthy of praise; they have been “teaching” us this for centuries. Even as I am filled with wonder and appreciation as I explore this part of

the world, I cannot let myself forget. So much of what I am experiencing is impossible to separate from the exploitation of other societies and cultures, whose own ability to flourish was cut short. I cannot forget that my people were treated as commodities. We were not considered people at all.

People stare at me as I walk down the street, and my friendly greetings are commonly met with silence as the Dutch locals I cross paths with openly watch. They blink in my face without registering the words I utter and I feel more like an artifact in a museum than a person living, breathing, and walking the earth like everyone else. In those moments I feel a growing disconnect, as if I am becoming something separate from them. Some thing , not someone. My differences dehumanize me.

I’m Asian, and my experience with Europe has been shaped by this simple fact. No colonial history is the same, and the positions of Asia and Europe relative to each other have produced unique tensions. Edward Said’s book Orientalism , claims that the Orient, or Asia as it was understood by its colonizers, was imagined, produced, and tangibly constructed by European powers. Orientalism, distinct from the actual reality of what is Asian or Middle Eastern, represents a separate concept—a romanticized interpretation based on contrasts. Said argues that Europe produced ideas of “the Orient” as “one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other.” It became a tool for differentiation, an aid in culturally defining and reinforcing the West as opposed to the East.

Remnants of these systems continue to have social effects within cultural landscapes. Colonized people became understood in the Eurocentric context as creatures to be studied, as curiosities and as objects. Until 1940, “human zoos” were still an attraction across Europe, displaying people from countries that were colonized. Amsterdam and Nijmegen are among the Dutch cities that put Indonesian and Surinamese people and artifacts on public display as spectacle. The legacy of this cultural consciousness has made way for the post-colonial version of yellow fever, for a European fascination with Asia but never a respectful appreciation that equates us to each other without disparity. Our objectification persists.

A complicated colonial history exists within every interaction and experience I have in the Netherlands. A complicated colonial history exists within me, too; I am the child of these legacies and I am distinctly aware of my burdens. I refuse myself the privilege of ignorant appreciation of the “glorious” European civilization laid out before me. I refuse the story Europe tells of itself because I refuse the story it has imposed upon me.

I am Asian, and I am in Europe. But I am not a fetish. I am not an object for observation, something for you to stare at. My life, and the culture of my country and its people are not something for you to exoticize and dehumanize in the same way the Dutch did when they used us to build their empires. I do not exist as your juxtaposition. This narrative is mine. Consider it a re-orientation.

canh kh o qua

Lý “Claudia” Gia Hân

Running a soup restaurant isn’t the most glamorous thing in the world. Piles and piles of ingredients fill the cupboards and fridge, waiting to be used and served. It also isn’t the most common. Restaurants always specialize in certain cultural cuisines in the area, but we only serve one thing: soup.

My father loved soup growing up. He always told me you could tell what someone was like by their soup order. “Soup is a way of feeling,” he would always say, “You can tell someone how you feel through a bowl of soup.”

I grew up in the restaurant. Soups from around the world were served almost twelve hours a day, and my father worked relentlessly to meet the day’s sale goal. Scents from the American East Coast blended with the scents of East Asian soups. Going around the world via soup wasn’t something I expected to ever do when I was older. But it was my father’s pride and joy. He poured his heart and soul into his restaurant and put every penny back into it.

“You don’t need new shoes. Đừ ng lo lắ ng nhé con? Don’t worry.” He looked at my shoes and hugged me. He didn’t know my toes were aching in the shoes one size too small for me. I nodded and went up to the small apartment we lived in above the restaurant. Freeing my feet, I sat on the floor and rubbed them. Every step to our room was painful, but I pushed myself through the door and fell onto the mattress pad. I laid face down on my pillow and let myself cry. My feet hurt so much, and he didn’t know a single thing.

I was left alone so often that I found company with the darkness that always engulfed the apartment. It was the same routine everyday: wake up, school, home, homework before the sun went down, sit in the dark. Ba always told me never to turn on the lights when I was home so we didn’t waste electricity, but I was scared of the dark. The only thing that would soothe me was the classical music CD stuck in our CD player. Day and night I would listen to the repeating

notes of “Clair de Lune.” It would break his heart if I told him I wasn’t happy. He gave up so much for his dream—who was I to wreck that? I was just a child, I couldn’t do that.

As I grew up, I found my passion for classical music and school became an escape. My fingers would fly across the piano keys, producing the beautiful sounds of comfort. I’d shut my eyes and sit in the music room for what felt like hours after school. The notes floated around the room and showed me what it was like to feel like I was on cloud nine. But all good things must come to an end, and every day my head hung as I sat under the moonlight doing my homework when I couldn’t finish it before the sun went down. ~~~

I hated soup. But here I was, running a restaurant that only served something I hated. He pushed me to the point where I grew to feel bitter at his passion for the restaurant. It was always the restaurant over me. When I was fifteen, my father had sat me down and explained that once he got too old, he wanted me to take over the restaurant. “Con is such a hard worker, like Ba. You can do it. Just cố gắ ng. You’re made to cook like me.” Just keep going. I would just smile and nod, knowing that what I said wouldn’t matter. My dreams of playing music for the world ran away after that. The last time I ever performed for a crowd was over ten years ago.

I was in the kitchen that day, awaiting my father’s arrival at the restaurant. I knew exactly what to cook him, after all, soup is a way of feeling. And this was the only way I could tell him how I felt, even if it was twenty years later. He left. He left this restaurant to me and didn’t even ask if that’s what I wanted. Không sao đâu. Không sao đâu. It’s okay. It’s okay. At least he was there when I was a kid, right? I didn’t know anymore. The pot was boiling and the scent of my feelings filled the kitchen, my nose scrunching at the bitter smell. I stared at my reflection in the soup. The musician in me was long gone, and there was the shell of who I was.

The bell rang as the door swung open and I could hear people happily chattering with him. Hiding behind the kitchen door, I peeked through the circular window to get a glimpse of them. My father was here, walking into the restaurant like he did nothing wrong. In reality, he never really did, but the grudge I held was rooted deep inside my heart. I smoothed my apron and watched him sit down at the corner booth, looking around at the restaurant he once operated. Shoving the kitchen door open, I plastered on a smile and walked toward my father. “Hi Dad,” I greeted, hands fiddling with the tie of my apron.

“Ah! My daughter! How are you, con? You look tired. Don’t stay up too late. Sleep early,” my father began, pointing out the bags under my eyes. I laughed half-heartedly and set a teapot and teacup on the table for him.

“I’m fine, Ba.”

“Work too much not good, con. Just like Ba, work too much.”

“I have to run the restaurant,” I counter, wondering why he was telling me to work less when he knew how much work it took to run the restaurant.

“What is soup of the day?” he asked, “Ba is kidding, con. Everything soup, just like I made it.” I forced another laugh out and folded my hands in front of myself. “Surprise me, con. Whatever soup you want. Ba sẽ đợi.”

Dad will wait. He didn’t need to wait long as I made my way back to the kitchen, spooning the simmering soup into a porcelain bowl before grabbing the matching spoon and heading back out. My dad beamed as he saw me walking toward him but his smile disappeared once I set the bowl in front of him. “Soup is a way of feeling. That’s what you always said.”

“Canh khổ qua? Con…” he was speechless. A dish I had grown up hating, but one that put my all into cooking. He stared at me in disbelief, and I walked away.

I didn’t need to look at him to see how it tasted. It tasted exactly how I wanted it to: more bitter than sweet.

AsiaE-Board

Treasurer

Vivienne Lam

Operations Chair

Gail Andersen

Secretary Urja Patel

Communciations Chair

Lily Farr

Communciations Chair

Lillian Oboza

If you had told me freshman year that I would be a future Co-Executive chair of ASIA, I would have probably laughed in your face. But three years later, here we are, and I couldn’t be more grateful for all the memories and experiences I’ve gained as an E-board member. Much of my college identity has been shaped by ASIA, from the lasting friendships I’ve made to the karaoke songs I chose to “sing.” I am incredibly grateful.

When I first joined E-board as a cooperations chair, I couldn’t imagine how Vince and Katelyn managed ASIA so diligently while remaining active members of the community. But I soon realized it’s all in the effort, passion, and collaboration put in by wthe rest of the E-board. I am so grateful for Kiyomi, JJ, Naomi, Grace, Vince, and Katelyn for laying a strong foundation for the next generation of E-board. I will forever cherish everything we did together.

Nothing could have been done without my other Co-Executives, Grace and Naomi. Each of their respective semesters would not have been possible if I hadn’t had either to lean on. Urja, Braden, Lily F, Lily O, Gail, and Vivienne: all your hard work and reliance has not gone unnoticed. Without all of you, our milestone 30th Anniversary Prom would not have happened. But thanks to everyone’s commitment, we created an event that will extend beyond our years. I couldn’t have asked for a better team.

I’m grateful for the first board who, thirty-one years ago, took on the burden of starting an organization so we did not have to. You laid the ground for something amazing.

Last but not least, thanks to Lunchbox for hosting a space for Asian creatives. This is a bittersweet goodbye as I relish all I’ve done with ASIA. I’m very sad about leaving my executive duties behind, but this end simultaneously marks the beginning for ASIA’s future leaders. I have the utmost faith in the next E-boards and our org. ASIA will stay in my heart always; it is forever a part of me, as are my fellow E-board and general members (Karenna <3 my day one).

I love you all. Mahal na mahal kita.

Hailey Bochette Co-Executive Chair Fall ‘23 and Spring ‘24

Hi Lunchbox/ASIA!

It’s Grace. I was the co-executive of ASIA last fall (no, they did not kick me off for spring, it was planned the entire time). When Hailey, my co-exec, approached me to write this letter I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to say that could be properly representative of ASIA, but also just as an Asian student at Emerson.

This feeling was akin to imposter syndrome, an acute insecurity that I was being Asian “wrong,’ and that one day I would be “found out” for being guilty of impersonating being Asian. This was probably borne out of my fish-out-of-water experience moving from California to South Korea when I was thirteen, where all of a sudden, I was surrounded by people who were “more” Korean, whether it was their mastery over the language or basic knowledge about history and culture.

I lived with this fear even as I moved to Boston at eighteen, and it felt justified. Among Asian Americans, I was the closest a person of the diaspora could get to “authenticity”, and all of a sudden, I was an authority on all matters Korean. Among international students, I was thoroughly Americanized just by growing up here, and it was as if my time abroad had no effect. Maybe this was all in my head, but whenever I was asked about how something was done in Korea, I felt like I had to scramble for answers.

In my freshman year, little events compounded, and before I knew it, I had said all of what I wrote here aloud at one of ASIA’s most popular, if not emotional events: our monthly Bubble Tea Talk. I was afraid that no one would understand how I felt, but a stranger told me they knew exactly knew exactly how I was feeling.. And I’ll never forget that;to have your pain acknowledged and echoed.

To me, that was the beginning of understanding the power of community and the importance of having spaces like ASIA, like Lunchbox. Through ASIA, I’ve learned that there’s no right or wrong way to be Asian, but rather, there are so many different experiences that contribute to a kaleidoscope of perspectives. I’ve learned so much during my involvement in this organization, from my peers and their lived experiences, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to adequately thank you all.

With all my love,

Grace Co-Executive Chair

Fall ‘23

I want to start this letter off by reflecting on the day I finished my E-board application way back at the end of freshman year. I remember my friend Vince from Lunchbox’s visual media team had reached out to me asking me to consider applying. I hesitated at first since I have always considered myself more on the shy side, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fulfill a leadership position. I am so happy to say that I pushed past that insecurity and decided to apply. I remember I had to return something to Hailey’s dorm, and on my way out, I nervously mentioned that I was applying to E-board and that I was excited to hang out next year. Three months later, I was meeting Grace for the first time, excitedly showing her the band posters in my dorm and encouraging my new friend to apply to E-board. To think this year, the three of us would be taking over the executive positions on E-board fills me with so much joy. Thank you to you both for going on this journey with me.

Thank you, Vince and Katelyn, for your support, encouragement, and leadership. I have always felt so welcomed by each of you. I also want to thank JJ, Kiyomi, Lily F, Lily O, Vivienne, Urja, Gail, and Braden for being my ASIA community. It made me so happy to get to know each of you and see you every week, I’ll always cherish the impact you have had on my Emerson experience. This is my last semester as a member of Eboard before I graduate in spring of 2025; but I know that I will carry the relationships I have formed here out into the world outside of Emerson.

ASIA is only able to operate because of the vulnerability and spirit of its members. To the ASIA and Lunchbox community, I thank you for continuously telling your stories and helping us make ASIA a safe space for Emerson’s Asian community. I am beyond grateful for the time we have shared over the course of the past three years.

Naomi Ash, Co-Executive Chair

Spring ‘25

It tasted exactly how I wanted it to: more bitter than sweet.