MY SCHOOL LUNCH WAS MY SHAME
Remembering when homemade lunches, that were lovingly prepared, got tossed, hidden or called ‘stinky’ by their peers
As a Chinese-Canadian kid growing up in Toronto, perhaps the most daunting moment I can remember in school was lunchtime. It was supposed to be one of the few times that we weren’t expected to be quiet, but when the lunch bell rang, fear would shoot through me.
It all started in kindergarten with a tupperware of fried fish and rice, and a group of kids pointing, jeering and plugging their noses at my lunch.
From that day on, words like “stinky” and “gross” were the ones I associated with Chinese food. Until Grade 12, I would ask my mom to pack fries, or chicken nuggets, but she always said the same thing: “Those things not healthy.” I’d pipe up, “It’s ‘are not healthy,’ learn your grammar.”
I didn’t want to live this dual life — of trying to be ‘Canadian’ at school, while being ‘Chinese’ at home.
I was already picked on for having ‘slanty eyes,’ and ‘eating dogs,’ and my desire to erase this part of my life — one of embarrassment and bottled-up anger, was unfortunately directed at my mother.
Those who had Fruit Roll-ups and Lunchables wielded the most power, whereas the few ethnic kids stared at each other across the classroom with the same shamed understanding that if we did open our lunches, it would take only one kid calling it “stinky” to ignite a fire.
In an effort to fit in, I used any allowance I got to buy a slice of pizza, while all the nutritious meals, homecooked with love, wound up in the trash almost every day.
By the time I reached my 20s, I had reconciled my love of Chinese food and saw those experiences as destructive to my identity. But I wanted to know, was I the only one who felt this way in school?
I put out a call asking for others to share their experiences and received an overwhelming response from people reflecting on this strange but influential time in their lives.
It seemed we had a shared experience in the juvenile hope that by swapping our cultural foods for prepackaged “make-your-own” pizzas, we’d feel more normal.
So over the next seven days, we’ll be sharing the stories of eight Canadians — the lunch they had, what made them feel embarrassed, and what they would say to themselves and their parents now in a series we’re calling Lunchbox Confessional.
If you’ve got a story or photo to share, use #lunchboxconfessional on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Christine Vu, 28, PR at Momofuku The lunch: The food is cha siu bao, it’s a Chinese dish. My parents bought it frozen. We called it Bánh bao in Vietnamese and this is what my sister and I lived off of. Why was it embarassing? I always made my own lunches because my parents both worked full time. I’d bring basic lunches, like ham sandwiches. I didn’t bring Vietnamese food, or Asian food to school, because I subconsciously got really good at separating my ethnic home life from school life because I went to a predominantly white school.
One time in high school I was in a rush and I just brought the frozen baos. That day, I got so many comments about how it smelled, how it looked, how weird it was, and it was embarrassing. Someone even asked me to throw it away. I did have an older student stick up for me, and all they had to say was ‘it smells good,’ and that made everyone shut up. I had never thought about it, but after that, I never brought it back to school.
Growing up in Fort McMurray, Alta., I didn’t really experience that much racism, but it was a different kind of racism where if you didn’t do things the way they did, you would feel othered. It was almost more shocking that way, because I never knew I was looked at differently until I brought these to school. It made me look at my own friends differently, and made me re-evaluate people that I hung around with. As a teenager I didn’t know how to articulate what was wrong, or how to speak up for myself. What would you say looking back?
My parents worked really hard and they didn’t really have time to provide anything else. When I was getting teased, I wish I just said some- thing myself, instead of waiting for someone else to say something, because there might not have been someone there to say anything at all. It was my own friends who were making comments, and I should have been comfortable enough to say something.
No one should be saying stuff like that anyway. At the time of the lunchroom incident, I didn’t tell my parents because I didn’t think they would get it.
Now, being othered is something I know they understand too. Food was just one of many things that made us different as a Vietnamese family in Fort McMurray.
As hard as it was at times, I wouldn’t change a thing. Submissions have been edited for clarity and length.