American Daughter
It was Restaurant Week in DC a couple weeks ago. Restaurant Week is a twice-annual event where fancy restaurants offer discounted lunch and dinner menus for the frugal masses. Most participating restaurants put together set three-course meals at reasonable prices, a way for us plebs to get a taste of the good life. My boyfriend James and I typically miss out on Restaurant Week because we learn about it too late, or we just couldn't nab reservations in time. This time around, James took the initiative and booked us reservations at American Son.
I had never heard of American Son. From James's description, I gathered American Son is headed by an Asian American chef who uses Asian ingredients to make non-Asian dishes. It sounded to me like Asian fusion. Having once cried into a bowl of pho because it was served with brussels sprouts, I went to the restaurant with a healthy bit of skepticism.
When you sit down at American Son and open up the Restaurant Week menu, the first thing you see is a handwritten letter Chef Tim Ma wrote to his parents. It went like this:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope I made you proud. I know the work you have put in, and the decisions you have had to make. You raised Ivana and I the only way you knew how, with the language you knew, the culture you loved, and the food you ate. But that was 1970s Arkansas, you might as well been from Mars. You witnessed the struggle we had as Chinese kids in rural Arkansas. The ridicule, the brick through the window, the sadness. Your strength, whether you knew it or not, has gotten us to this point. That decision and awareness to raise us not within the comfort of our Chinese homes, but as Americans, I applaud your resolve. You taught us a language you did not know, fed us food you could not cook, and immersed us in a culture you did not understand. And with that, we became American, though we looked world's apart. I know you would have to introduce us to other Chinese people as "My American Son," to explain why I couldn't speak Chinese, why I didn't know our culture, or why I didn't like our food, but I am proud of who you have allowed me to become.
Love,
Timmy
I read this letter three times before the waiter came to take our orders and took away the menus. The first time I read it, I fixated on one thing: "How could you not like our food?!" A visceral flinch to what felt like a slap in the face. The second time I read it, I felt guilt. Because, upon looking at the rest of the menu, I realized that the food isn't Asian fusion. Chef Ma has taken classic American comfort food and infused it with Asian ingredients. It is American fusion. The food he prepares is a reflection of his personal Asian American experience. Just because he is Asian, doesn't mean he is pigeon-holed into just cooking Asian foods. And he is allowed to not like Chinese food. Who am I to say otherwise?
The third time I read the letter, it occurred to me that each and every Asian American ingests and digests their culture, their environments, and their lived experiences in unique and specific ways. Sometimes these mastications are nourishing, like watching "Princess Mononoke" with your white friends at a fourth grade sleepover. Sometimes it's poison, like a brick through the window. We internalize these experiences. It becomes who we are, how we grow up, how we parent, who we befriend, how we survive. It manifests in the amount of Asian-ness we reject, and the amount of American-ness we assume.
It's kind of overwhelming to consider, like the realization that every person is a protagonist of their own story and there are 7.5 billion people in the world. Every Asian American person experiences race and ethnicity distinctly, and there are 21 million Asian Americans in the US.
There is no one way to be (Asian) American.
We all do this. All minorities do this. When our skin color, our hair color, our ethnic background, our language, our culture, our traditions and our race aren't the defaults in our country of residence, we have to learn, implicitly and explicitly, about who we are, how we fit, and what we make of it. Some of us make braised short ribs over grits with charred persimmon. Some of us make pho with brussels sprouts.
Admittedly, this is where my extended metaphor falls apart a bit. Because we should not make judgements on how "Asian" or how "American" someone is, but I still think pho with brussels sprouts is a travesty.
P.S. The food at American Son was very good. Highly recommend. And more about Chef Tim Ma here, if you're interested.
You can find guest writer Joanne Lin on Twitter at @acupofjoanne
