Kimchi: How My Heritage Became a Hipster Pickle
Global cuisine and its untold stories
Probiotic. Raw. Vegan. Napa cabbage kimchi. We cackled at the labels on the sorry-looking mason jars filled with sallow yellow leaves.
Kimchi had become ubiquitous in my chosen spaces — a trendy fusion diner, an upscale grocery chain, YouTube channels filled with millennial cheer. It had become some sort of Asian sauerkraut, a pickle that imbued some kind of cosmopolitan flair to the irreverent melting pot of North American cuisine.
To me, kimchi is an inheritance I never asked for, a reminder of the lineage I belong to — a genealogy of women’s sacrifice and buried stories, and the painful labor that keeps our culture alive.
A colleague once prepared japchae for a potluck at work. I gazed at the plate, bemused, as she mentioned that it was vegan and gluten free.
“Cool,” I said. I was the only Korean in the room. I picked at the broccoli, inexplicably mixed with the lighter-than-usual noodles. It tasted like nothing.
Japchae is one of my least favorite foods. Its traditional ingredients include sliced carrots, spinach, onions, beef, mushrooms, and sweet potato starch noodles. It’s a colorful culmination seldom missing from important traditional holiday meals. I was in my…
