Wren’s Reviews > Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family > Status Update

“We give so that we can feed our loved ones while having just enough to survive ourselves. In the hopes of being accepted, of contributing enough to be seen, Filipinos are taught to surrender their bodies to work, to giving, teaching, caring. Our total surrender in exchange for mere tolerance, so that America may feel secure enough to be free”

“We believed that if we strived to be just as industrious, just as educated, just as hard-working as the Americans, we would succeed, just like them, true meritocracy and democracy for all”

“‘ I think the reason you and I are still alive […] is because of all those adults at school who made us feel like we were worth something.’”

“ I wonder what it means, that these national spelling bees are so often won by immigrant kids, immigrants’ kids, or immigrants’ grandkids. A competition for whose tongues and minds have assimilated the most, absorbed culture into our stomach linings, our blood streams.”

“I had yet to learn that in this land of disappearance, food from home was our only way to remind ourselves that we exist”

I really like the writing style. It’s gorgeous. It drops you into the language without hesitating and jut pulls you along for the ride

“To paraphrase Proust- when everything is gone or hidden away, like my family and I had to be-food is always there to help us remember, allowing us to taste joy, wonder, sorrow, rage.”