2023 BAAFN Award
Rice Cake
by Soomin Lee
Whenever my father would bring home a bag of sweet rice from H-Mart, I would run around the apartment, striking up a chant: Daddy’s making 떡! Daddy’s making 떡!
떡 (tteok)—rice cake—was one of my favorite snacks. My father would usually get it store-made, but occasionally, he would make it himself. I would try to help him out any way I could as a seven-year-old, fetching our mortar and pestle, sometimes getting to grind a tiny bit of the rice.
I remember the hearty smell filling my nose, my body, as the rice mush swelled into sticky fullness in the oven. The cheery silence that settled over the kitchen, as my sisters and I helped my father clean up. The sweetness that flooded my mouth as I took my first bite, which was warm and filling and tasted like home.
In middle school, home was no longer my family’s 떡, but was instead peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and hangouts at my friend’s house. I fueled my body with pasta and sandwiches and Starbucks vanilla bean Frappuccinos, laughing with my friends at the sesame crackers and kimchi that my parents stocked in our cabinets. The memories of homemade 떡 were overwhelmed by the tempting taste of American childhood.
My mother encouraged me to try reading our Korean picture books. “What if you can’t read hangul anymore?” she asked. I said nothing, because how would Good! I don’t want to be Korean! have sounded against such an eager plea? Whenever I walked by those picture books, I felt some kind of longing. I knew that a part of me was fading away like the colors on those dusty covers, but I walked past them, anyway.
I always laughed whenever my name was butchered, but I wanted to hide every time a well-meaning substitute teacher called my name for attendance, voice wavering with uncertainty, or a busy Starbucks barista opened their mouth, shut it, and placed my cup on the counter without trying.
At a certain point, I had had enough. Whenever I was asked for my name at coffee shops or stores, I answered without hesitation, “Rose.” Now, I thought, I am the perfect American girl.
Home for a sixteen-year-old is much different than home for a twelve-year-old. Home was no longer cheap sandwiches and fake laughter, but the embrace of a boy. A nice, white boy—someone who got me, despite the color of his skin and his dinners-at-the-Harvard-Club upbringing. I had just gotten over my fear of speaking Korean in public, after all, and dating someone who paid even the slightest attention to my culture was new and exciting.
He loved to cook, and eagerly asked me about seaweed soup, the Korean birthday soup. He told me that he would love to have dinner with me and my family and get a taste of authentic Korean food. He tasted kimchi, and though he didn’t like it, wanted to try more of my favorite dishes. Food, an integral part of every culture, was the way to my heart. I was seven again, running up and down the hall as my father brought in the sweet rice. I didn’t have to hide my language, my food, my identity. This was home.
So, when he wouldn’t believe that Asians were people of color, no matter how many sources I gave him, I told myself he just didn’t know any better. When he laughed with his friends about my “liberal” Instagram stories, where I shared posts about anti-Asian violence, I told myself he was entitled to his own opinions.
I was proud to be Korean, but really, just a certain type of Korean. Someone cute, someone small, someone who taught their white boyfriend little phrases that he would never remember. Was this truly home?
I no longer run around the hall, chanting, “Daddy’s making 떡!,” but I get excited when my mother makes black bean noodles and spicy rice cake. I still can’t read Korean, but I write stories and poems about someone like me, finding herself in a world that forces one or the other. 떡 is still one of my favorite snacks, but I also do love a good peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
For years, I grappled with an impossible question: was I Asian, or American? Now, as I stand on the hyphen of Asian-American, balancing my two identities, I realize that I don’t have to answer the question at all. I can find home in both of them.
떡 (tteok)—rice cake—was one of my favorite snacks. My father would usually get it store-made, but occasionally, he would make it himself. I would try to help him out any way I could as a seven-year-old, fetching our mortar and pestle, sometimes getting to grind a tiny bit of the rice.
I remember the hearty smell filling my nose, my body, as the rice mush swelled into sticky fullness in the oven. The cheery silence that settled over the kitchen, as my sisters and I helped my father clean up. The sweetness that flooded my mouth as I took my first bite, which was warm and filling and tasted like home.
In middle school, home was no longer my family’s 떡, but was instead peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and hangouts at my friend’s house. I fueled my body with pasta and sandwiches and Starbucks vanilla bean Frappuccinos, laughing with my friends at the sesame crackers and kimchi that my parents stocked in our cabinets. The memories of homemade 떡 were overwhelmed by the tempting taste of American childhood.
My mother encouraged me to try reading our Korean picture books. “What if you can’t read hangul anymore?” she asked. I said nothing, because how would Good! I don’t want to be Korean! have sounded against such an eager plea? Whenever I walked by those picture books, I felt some kind of longing. I knew that a part of me was fading away like the colors on those dusty covers, but I walked past them, anyway.
I always laughed whenever my name was butchered, but I wanted to hide every time a well-meaning substitute teacher called my name for attendance, voice wavering with uncertainty, or a busy Starbucks barista opened their mouth, shut it, and placed my cup on the counter without trying.
At a certain point, I had had enough. Whenever I was asked for my name at coffee shops or stores, I answered without hesitation, “Rose.” Now, I thought, I am the perfect American girl.
Home for a sixteen-year-old is much different than home for a twelve-year-old. Home was no longer cheap sandwiches and fake laughter, but the embrace of a boy. A nice, white boy—someone who got me, despite the color of his skin and his dinners-at-the-Harvard-Club upbringing. I had just gotten over my fear of speaking Korean in public, after all, and dating someone who paid even the slightest attention to my culture was new and exciting.
He loved to cook, and eagerly asked me about seaweed soup, the Korean birthday soup. He told me that he would love to have dinner with me and my family and get a taste of authentic Korean food. He tasted kimchi, and though he didn’t like it, wanted to try more of my favorite dishes. Food, an integral part of every culture, was the way to my heart. I was seven again, running up and down the hall as my father brought in the sweet rice. I didn’t have to hide my language, my food, my identity. This was home.
So, when he wouldn’t believe that Asians were people of color, no matter how many sources I gave him, I told myself he just didn’t know any better. When he laughed with his friends about my “liberal” Instagram stories, where I shared posts about anti-Asian violence, I told myself he was entitled to his own opinions.
I was proud to be Korean, but really, just a certain type of Korean. Someone cute, someone small, someone who taught their white boyfriend little phrases that he would never remember. Was this truly home?
I no longer run around the hall, chanting, “Daddy’s making 떡!,” but I get excited when my mother makes black bean noodles and spicy rice cake. I still can’t read Korean, but I write stories and poems about someone like me, finding herself in a world that forces one or the other. 떡 is still one of my favorite snacks, but I also do love a good peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
For years, I grappled with an impossible question: was I Asian, or American? Now, as I stand on the hyphen of Asian-American, balancing my two identities, I realize that I don’t have to answer the question at all. I can find home in both of them.