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H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle “ethnic” section in regular grocery stores.
Ha-ha. There are separate aisles for South Asian and American items.
as we take the escalator up to the food court.
Wow!
like somehow this stranger’s survival is at all related to my loss.
a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.
H Marts are usually situated on the outskirts of the city
Not where I live! Where I live, H Mart moved into the space vacated by Giant.
Inside an H Mart complex, there will be some kind of food court, an appliance shop, and a pharmacy.
pseudo-French bakery
Just like here!
the food court is above it.
Korean ramen (basically just Shin Cup noodles with an egg cracked in);
gochujang, a sweet-and-spicy paste that’s one of the three mother sauces used in pretty much all Korean dishes.
the perfect place to people-watch
Which ones weren’t able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years?
COVID, COVID, COVID HT Donald Trump
A cafeteria full of people from all over the world who have been displaced in a foreign country, each with a different history.
What we’re looking for isn’t available at a Trader Joe’s. H Mart is where your people gather under one odorous roof, full of faith that they’ll find something they can’t find anywhere else.
Some days, the constant nagging would annoy me. Woman, let me eat in peace! But, most days, I knew it was the ultimate display of a Korean woman’s tenderness, and I cherished that love.
I’m searching for memories. I’m collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when they did.
this fusion of moral and aesthetic approval was an early introduction to the value of beauty and the rewards it had in store.
the cooker having imbued each kernel with textural autonomy,
!
“Your mother warned me not to let you take advantage of me.”
the last piece of wisdom she’d imparted before shuffling off the mortal coil: Watch out for that kid; she’s out to take advantage of you.
How you could treat us so cruelly.”
Cheated out of a childhood, out of a father, and now he’d been cheated again, robbed of the woman he loved just a few years shy of their final chapter.
The taming of this mountain of chattel into a reasonable collection of possessions took on the proportions of penal labor, its completion looming like a deserved exit, a sentence’s end.
