Cooking and healing 🦐 🐖

December 26, 2019 6:26 PM

Cooking and healing in my mother's Vietnamese kitchen In the midst of misunderstandings and estrangement, one woman and her mother found solace in making spring rolls.
posted by Bee'sWing (5 comments total)

Later, when I called her, after we cried and apologised and vowed to do better, she said: "Let's get together. Let's make spring rolls."
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:34 PM on December 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this piece, though usually I find the “essay organized around a recipe” to be tedious. Here it was done honestly and deftly enough to slip past my defenses. I look forward to her son’s essay in twenty years.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 4:48 AM on December 27, 2019

That was powerful.
posted by PMdixon at 8:10 AM on December 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

The relationship between her parents is heartbreaking on its own. (And I really liked how delicately the author made that clear and not entirely about herself; seems like good observation and adulthood, definitely good writing.)
posted by clew at 10:57 AM on December 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

The whole cannot obliterate the parts.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:56 PM on December 30, 2019