Issue No. 6: Food, Nutrition, and Access in Our Communities
Words - Emily Mei Ling Chan

I went shopping for gochujang for the first time at 26, and I felt lost. I felt like an imposter. What I really mean is I felt white. I stood there in the narrow aisle selfishly cursing the fog of your dementia. I wanted so badly to call and ask which brand you used, which brand is best. Was it too much to ask to feel a connection to our family’s lineage of women, spanning generations and continents and time–through loyalty to a cherished chili paste brand? 

As I walked home, the cheapest gochujang in my hand (because I know you’d say “when in doubt, price is what counts”), I thought of you venturing into the backyard. 

You were hunched over, digging deep into the earth with just your hands–dirt would be under your fingernails for days. You dug deeper and deeper, until the massive jar of fermenting, fiery cabbage sat snugly within the ground. This would be its home as it hibernated for winter.

I can still feel your sticky kitchen floors. In the summertime, my bare feet would briefly bond to the tiles coated in decades of cooking oil. The simple heel-toe walking motion would be interrupted ever so slightly, as the lift of a foot came with a subtle but satisfying peeling sensation. 

I can still breathe in the smells of your house. The fermenting, sour dankness steeped into your walls was so thick it would soak into my hair, my clothes, my skin–long after I had left.

I would shower as soon as I got home. Washing it all away.