24 Narrative: “Disconnectivity”

Achanti Hay

Instructor JennahRose English

ENG 1013.77

19 September 2022

Cover Letter

When I first glanced at the assignment sheet, I thought “Space” meant we were writing an essay about outer space. After finding out it meant a physical space or area, my mind was blank. The learning narrative was the most uninteresting to me and none of the topics that fit the prompt were things I wanted to write about for my first essay. Though the space narrative drew me in after understanding the prompt and it brewed the most creativity in my mind.

I liked the idea of sharing the significance of space with readers but I couldn’t decide on what space I wanted to describe. To my surprise, I thought of my room first, but my room has so much depth and memories attached to it that I felt overwhelmed. I knew that if I attempted to use my room as my main source I’d cry before even brainstorming. I also knew that most people would pick their room, which isn’t a bad thing. I’d compare myself to everyone else and I wouldn’t be able to focus on my writing and improvement.

The week we started brainstorming I realized that most memories I cherish have to do with family and friends and cooking food. To me culturally, food is important in every aspect. When I did my free writing I wrote about how traditional dishes are what connected me to my culture and I ended up going for that purpose in my final essay as well.

Beginning my essay was the hardest part. I got stuck on the beginning hook for too long and ended up changing it anyway. It was the most challenging part for me to write because it impacts the reader’s first impression and if I couldn’t make a good hook I felt like the rest of the essay wouldn’t be good moving forward. Most parts I hated and I struggled with finding the right stories to write about. Even though in the end I got to nine hundred-something words I’m still doubting myself about the stories I told. Were they the most important things in my life? Do they show the readers the significance of my space? The most challenging part was making the essay make sense. My essay is what’s left of my memory of certain experiences and a lot of the time my peers didn’t know what I was talking about.

Along with that, I didn’t know how to make the readers know that my essay was about the kitchen without writing the word kitchen a million times. To counter this I had more peers outside peer review read my essay and tell me what did and didn’t make sense. I got my mom to tell me her point of view from family gatherings, birthdays, and such. I talked to my friends about how they would describe our memories in their own words to see if I was missing anything important about the feel of the kitchen. But writing an essay in a format where the readers are supposed to feel like they’re experiencing these stories themselves was so challenging and that level of expressing myself was new to me.

Disconnectivity

“Mom’s kitchen,” a rectangular wooden sign sitting at the top of the pantry door, has always been a staple of my family’s kitchen decor. The memories attached to the sign have grown since ten years ago when I gifted it to my mom for her birthday. I skim through flashes of my life each moment I glance at it. Flashbacks from all the different gatherings held in the kitchen overwhelm me. From fresh vanilla cupcakes to steaming egg rolls, and a warm pot of pho, each dish is essential to every party held in our house. Each family member had a job the night before any significant event. As a seven-year-old, I wasn’t much of a help as I thought I was. My service consisted of peeling egg roll wraps and bossing my family members around, telling them, “you have a job to do! Mom said so!” each time I found one of them on the couch. The soft dough made me love peeling the sheets apart. Peeling the perfect square of the dough gives me a feeling of satisfaction unlike any other. Mom tried to convince me that my job of peeling the egg roll wrappers was important, though even then I knew it was just busy work.

Trays filled with Viet and Lao food sit on the kitchen island and the aroma calms me down after hours of preparation for the party. I breathe in the aroma of beef Pho broth and hot frying oil while playing Just Dance in the living room, passing the time before guests arrive. Not much later, lots of extended families fill the cramped driveway. The adults get on one knee to become eye level with the kids before saying, “Wow, you’ve grown so much!” and complimenting us in our native languages. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Instead of being quiet and compliant, I questioned them and told them I didn’t understand. When I was younger, their reactions were more surprising but as I grew their interactions with me became more hostile each year I couldn’t speak Vietnamese. Thinking of it now, that’s when I first felt zero attachment to my culture, I realized I had been disconnected compared to all my cousins. As an Asian American, it’s standard to at least be able to comprehend a native language. Though I wasn’t raised bilingual, I was consistently blamed by my family for not being able to express myself in Vietnamese.

As I grew older, my responsibilities started to evolve from playing in the kitchen to being conditioned to become a “proper lady.” Being a girl and a part of the first generation in my family meant I was born with the pressure of learning to nurture and care for my family the way my mom did when she first came to America. I soon grew out of the phase of trying to avoid doing housework and found myself clinging to my mom each time she walked to the stove. I followed her around the kitchen while she told me stories of her growing up with five siblings.

She explained her childhood on how she cleaned, cooked, and bathed all of them, as I watched her make Banh xeo in awe. The batter mixed with chopped green onions made the kitchen feel heavenly, although she claims it isn’t nearly as good as my grandma’s version.

My grandma knows very little English, but she communicates with us through food, and making sure we eat is all she’s concerned about when we visit her in California. Arriving at her apartment at 11 p.m. on a dry summer night, her kitchen light is always on. Her window is the only source of light throughout the whole complex. It’s also our guide to her door. My grandma’s silhouette prances from the fridge to the frying pan, as we listen to the sizzling from outside. Curry empanadas, eggs with vegetables and rice—both are ways she says, “I love you.” When I looked at my grandma’s stone-age fridge, I saw a picture of my younger mom holding a curry empanada in her hand, taken at grandma’s old house back in Vietnam. Each dish has been passed down from my grandma to my mom.

My grandma’s food is always traditional Vietnamese food, but my mom somehow juggles Vietnamese and American dishes at the same time, making me confused as to how she was so versatile. Burgers and Bun bo Hue are confusing when cooked together and I never understood how she kept up with her culture even when indulging in contrasting ones. Being in the kitchen and comparing both my mom and my grandma, how can I call myself Vietnamese? I wasn’t born there and I don’t speak the language, but to say I am Vietnamese feels right. Looking back, whenever I assembled spring rolls or learned how to make shrimp stuffing, I have a feeling my mom is reminiscing about the first time she did it as well. I’m realizing now that there isn’t a scale to measure how connected I am to the culture and that through generations, these recipes were spread. Before, I was measuring my identity based on what I didn’t know, but now I know that I’ve been connected to my culture my entire life. I never needed to justify it to anyone and I never should.