While immigrant
The bitter taste of assimilation and the joy of ‘stinky’ food
Ashley T. handed me a pink cloud wrapped in a wrinkly, silver piece of paper. On top, a shower of red and white hearts. The thing smelled suspiciously sweet, almost sickly so, but tantalizing nonetheless. What was this thing?
It was 1990, and my family had just moved to Orange County, Calif., from the Philippines. I was experiencing my first kindergarten birthday party, and I didn’t understand this ritual. I was new to the country, new to English. Was this freckled girl with mouse-brown hair trying to poison me? The thing she put in front of me seemed innocuous enough — the pink swirl on top matched her pink gingham dress — and the other kids seemed to be enjoying it.
Slowly, I took a bite of the pretty thing in my hands, and my eyes practically exploded out of their sockets. The interior was a cake but denser than what I was used to. The creamy pink swirl was a revelation in texture and sweetness, a shock to the system, while the hearts crumbled with each crunch. This cupcake was my first taste of America, and I was in love.
Before my mom became a nurse, she spent her days keeping our home in order, that is, keeping her husband and four boys in line. Dinner would often be on the stove by noon, on the table by 5 p.m. Her food — edible postcards from Olongapo City on Luzon, the largest island in an archipelago of 7,000 — was comforting, reminding me of a home I haven’t had much contact with since I was 9.
We didn’t grow up with grilled cheese sandwiches or chicken nuggets. Snacks consisted of siapao, a Filipino adaptation of Chinese pork buns, or leftover lumpia Shanghai, tightly rolled deep-fried cigarettes of finely chopped carrots, onion, celery leaves and pork. My brothers loved sinigang the most, that pungent sour tamarind soup of gray pork hunks floating alongside roughly quartered tomatoes, chunky eggplant and soft spinach.
My mother’s daily ritual of washing rice with her tiny, strong hands, twothree times under running filtered water was her — and my — connection to her 11 siblings, my dozens of cousins, my frail grandfather.
Food was how I experienced the world, both old and new. Food was how I knew I was loved.
“That smells weird,” said the pudgy pale boy in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt, pointing to my plastic container of tender rice, vinegarscented sinigang and funky saw-sawan, a salsalike mix of tomato and fish sauce.
I went home crying, telling my mom I didn’t want to bring “stinky food” to school anymore. The next day, and for years after that, my school lunch consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, Lunchables, cups of diced peaches drowning in high-fructose corn syrup.
Thinking back, I can see the hurt in my mother’s eyes as I disavowed the bright, savory, varied cuisine of my Filipino upbringing. Thanks a lot, Travis.
My story is one of many an immigrant child coming to the U.S. and reckoning with schoolyard taunting over our “weird” food, lovingly made by mothers, grandmothers, parents who don’t understand the passive violence of this lunchtime judgment.
And yet, in 2018, Filipino cuisine — and Korean, and Sichuan, and Thai — is trendy. Restaurants around the country, run by white chefs, have “elevated” the BR foods of my mother, of other immigrants, having profited off stacks of lumpia, bowls of pancit, jars of kimchi and bottles of house-made fermented vinegars, without so much as a nod to the brown kitchens and people from which these foods originated.
There’s a bittersweet hurt to see my people’s food celebrated now as the new “it” girl of cuisine. To know that for years, I and countless others needlessly felt embarrassment and shame for loving the food of our elders, our mothers. To know that my mom just wanted us to fit in, as much as our brown skin stood out. There’s also the simultaneous joy in sharing, in the invitation of a meal — “come, get to know me, to know us, to know our food. There’s plenty of knowledge (and rice) to go around.”
As I went through school, I lost other parts of my Filipino-ness. I lost my mother tongue. I erased my accent. My name was stripped down for parts, and I was dubbed “Joe.” At home, I’d still eat my mother’s meals with abandon, a dirty secret from kids at school. When I got ready in the morning, I scrubbed Prep: Makes: 1½ 1 2 2 1
1 1 Nutrition information per serving: and scrubbed my skin in scalding hot water, in case I smelled like dried fish or, worse, pork blood. Being American meant looking, acting, talking and, yes, eating like an American. My pride in my culture and upbringing was undercut by the shame of otherness— it took years to process these two realities, but ultimately, my pride won out.
One day, still in kindergarten, it was my own birthday. I didn’t think much of it — my mom never baked and thought cupcakes were too sweet cigarettes of
for kids, so she never bought them either.
Unbeknownst to me, my teacher had called my mom to tell her that kids normally brought a treat for their classmates on their birthdays. Would she like to bring something for a small class party?
Is it possible for a heart to float and drop at the same time? When I saw my mom walk into my classroom, I was excited to see her — until I saw what she had in her hands. Lumpia, essential party food for Pinoys, a giant bowl of rice, and an array of sauces, peppery, garlicky, funky.
“These aren’t cupcakes. Where are the cupcakes?” (“Shut up, Travis,” I thought.) But too late: The jig was up. My months of work at fitting in was for naught, and all of my strangeness, my foreignness, was about to be served up fried and crunchy to a room of exacting palates.
I sat in terror, my plate of golden lumpia and pearled rice untouched in front me. I stared and stared, wanting to disappear. But then — I heard eager crunching, the sound of papery egg rolls a chaotic chorus. Ashley T., who became one of my first friends, shot me a thumbsup. All over the classroom, kids were trying each of my mother’s sauces, from red to green to brown to red again. My teacher and mom were huddled, and it looked as if the former was writing down the recipe.
Then Travis, that little jerk, came over to me with his heaping plate. Oh, no.
“Hey, this is good. Can you tell me about it?” Happily.