by the time it’s one in the afternoon on wednesday, i’m counting down the hours until i can leave the office and go to noodle bar columbus circle. it’s been almost a month since i’ve been to a momofuku, and, yeah, i miss it, and, yeah, it’s cold, making it the perfect weather for noodles, but i mostly just want to eat something familiar.
it’s been A Week in publishing.
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on tuesday, flatiron books published american dirt, a novel by a white woman (who only recently started claiming latinx lineage via a puerto rican grandmother when, just a few years ago, she acknowledged that she was white). flatiron reportedly paid seven figures for the novel, winning out in an auction. the novel has been starred in publishers weekly and is being widely heralded as the immigration novel of the year. to offer the briefest of summaries, it follows a mother-and-son pair who flee druglords in mexico and try to cross the border into the u.s.
the latinx community has been vocally speaking up against this book in the weeks leading up to pub day. the book isn’t only terribly written, but it is full of terrible stereotypes that reinforce the narrative the white majority wants from latinx stories — drugs, violence, desperate escape, america as the savior — which in turn reinforces racist bullshit. i’m not going to go specifically into how american dirt is harmful and reductive with its stereotypes and mangling of mexican culture and the spanish language. i am not latinx, and i don’t believe that is my place. there are many great sources for more information on that, though, from myriam gurba’s review (which ms. refused to run, paying her a kill fee instead) to david bowles’ medium post to the highlights posted on lupita’s instagram.
also, if you’re white, you should never be coming to BIPOC with the expectation or demand that we educate or inform you on BIPOC issues. that’s neither our job nor our burden to bear.
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the question of who gets to tell what stories in publishing is similar to the question of who gets to cook what food in, well, food — it’s the question of “authenticity.”
whenever the question of “authenticity” comes up, though, i feel that people get tangled up in the dumb surface-level questions like “who gets to write/cook what” and “what’s really authentic, anyway” and — white people’s favorite — “should people only get to write/cook what they know, isn’t that censorship” when we should be talking about what actually lies at the root of the stupid question. it’s not about maintaining purity or drawing strict lines. it’s about racism, what is or is not permitted to minority and marginalized groups.
it’s about power.
i frankly don’t really care if a white person does their due diligence, really sinks into another culture, and respectfully learns about it and wants to pay courtesy to that culture. i think there’s something really cool about that (and i’d much rather have white people eat our food instead of mocking it), but the problem is that white people are often so inexplicably inclined to decide that their interest somehow makes them an authority — and that we live in a world that reinforces that belief. white people are permitted to tell the stories of minority cultures, to speak on behalf of them, to take and appropriate when there are plenty of us out here who are able to tell our stories, to be authorities on our cultures, our food, our literature. we can speak for ourselves, but we are so often shut out of the room and denied our own voices. we are not given seven-figure advances for our stories. we are not even allowed to tell stories that are actually authentically ours, not when they exist outside of what the white majority wants from us, which are stories of trauma, of fleeing war or violence, of pain.
our stories aren’t valued unless they fit into that lane prescribed for us, just like our food isn’t valued unless it fits into that “authentic” bullshit of being cheap and grungy and “ethnic.”
ultimately, we aren’t valued unless we fit into the white savior narrative.
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on wednesday night, i flee into a bowl of noodles. i was planning to go to momofuku last night, anyway, and i was debating going to bar wayo because i want that clam chowder again, but wayo is in the goddamn river, so it’s even more cold down there than in midtown. also, it’s way out of the way, and i have to be home for a freelance call at 19:30. noodle bar, it is.
it’s kind of incredible how this american dirt mess has continued to get worse. it turns out that flatiron threw a dinner for the book at BEA last year … with decorations that resembled walls wrapped in barbed wire. cummins and oprah are planning to visit the border because oprah is sticking to her new book club selection of american dirt. oprah’s team reached out to actual latinx writer valeria luiselli to ask if she had any latinx writers she’d recommend, then responded to luselli’s recommendations asking if she had worked with any “illegal people.”
the thing is — this mess has exposed the rot that still lies in publishing. american dirt may have gotten a huge advance and etcetera, but it is just one book in the grand scheme of things. if this were a one-off situation, maybe people wouldn’t be so angry about it, but it’s not — this shit happens all the time. publishing is still a blindingly white industry, and racism runs unhindered through it. i might as well say here that i write this as someone who is currently working within the industry, and i am terrified because this could cost me my job. i’m also a writer, and i’m terrified this could fuck me over just as i’m getting started.
it needs to be said, though, so i’m saying it. over the last few years, faced with surveys that showed how blindingly white they are, publishers have taken on diversity initiatives, but, unsurprisingly, much of these initiatives feel hollow, like publishers are being forced to take on hires and do the bare minimum to be able to pat themselves on the back. publishers haven’t done much to try to remove the barriers that help keep publishing so blindingly white — the salary for entry-level jobs is terribly low, and the standard of living in NYC is stupidly high. add to that the fact that entry-level jobs also require numerous publishing internships just to get a foot in the door, and those internships are either paid minimum wage or not paid at all. even when we’re talking more experienced roles, publishing (at least, as i have experienced it) still wants some kind of publishing experience, thus looping back to those damn internships. and pay is just one barrier of entry. we’re not even going into publishing’s ability to retain diverse talent.
to be clear, i’m not talking about indie publishers or small presses here. i’m talking big five, multi-billion dollar corporations that can pay millions of dollars on one book advance. don’t try to tell me they can’t afford to pay their employees a fair living wage and actually invest in breaking down the barriers that keep BIPOC out.
because it’s not that they can’t afford to. they simply don’t want to.
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last year, i made a conscious decision not to pitch white editors unless there was someone i really wanted to work with (because the unspoken qualifier is that i know there are great white people out there who do the work of being good people and standing up for BIPOC and trying to make space for us). if i ever get back on the agent hunt, i will not be submitting to white agents, again unless there’s one i really want to work with. i’d insist on a book editor who is a person of color, a publicist who is a person of color, etcetera.
i know that i’m completely fucking myself over with this decision. there are only so many editors of color out there, and it gets even worse when it comes to food writing because i’m often left just floundering over where to pitch long-form writing. i’m still sitting on a long essay on the cultural influence of momofuku because i don’t know who to send it to, BIPOC or not, because there are so few places who would take a piece like this.
(it’s too bad. it’s actually perfect time-wise, given dave chang’s forthcoming memoir and momofuku’s new secret bbq restaurant, which continues momofuku on this new trajectory it pivoted onto starting with majordomo.)
and here’s where i’ll also put into words things we’re not supposed to say as BIPOC or as writers: if i didn’t genuinely love my white writer friends, i might resent them for not having to make this kind of decision. i almost resent my white colleagues for being able to move so freely about their workplaces and not having to translate themselves constantly or worry about saying something off-kilter that might offend their white boss or think about how they’ll inevitably hit the “bamboo ceiling.” i do begrudge them their automatic seat at the table because of the color of their skin.
i do resent white people their outrage when they get called out on their white privilege; that outrage alone is such a great example of white privilege. their thin-skinnedness makes me laugh and want to draw blood. i want them to hurt like we hurt, to be told that their stories are niche, that, oh, we already published a book about a white woman in brooklyn this year, we already have our White Novel of the year, so maybe try pitching us your book again in five years. i doubt they could handle it.
and i most certainly resent the white people who slurp noodles at momofuku because they’re all so happy to consume our food, our culture, our stories, without bothering to learn our names, speak our languages, or see us as human. they’re more than happy to take and appropriate without giving us the space to use our own voices and gaslighting us when we try to speak up and call them out on their shit. they’re more than happy to go around talking about how they love kimchi or pho or sushi, to act like that supposed love means they get to speak for us, like we should be grateful for their support, like we would be nowhere without them, thank you for saving us, for helping us, for keeping us from being faceless masses, thank you for how you’ve fucked us all with your white imperialism and created the problems you love to save us from.
in korean, we say, 병주고 약주네. give the disease then give the medication.
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at one point last year, i started planning a book-length project around momofuku. it would be a collection of essays, each essay focusing on a different restaurant with its own attached theme — like kawi would explore the idea of home and belonging, majordomo would look at los angeles as a place of trauma that i still love and return to, nishi at queerness. i was never quite sure what the noodle bar essay would be themed, but, had i not partially abandoned the project, i know now that it would have been about comfort.
there are many reasons i’m so drawn to momofuku, but, at the heart of it, it’s pure comfort. momofuku is warm and familiar to me, and i find myself returning to it constantly because i appreciate this ease — i find it in such few places. kawi really hones in on this sense of home and recognition because i know where eunjo park’s food comes from, but the momofuku group as a whole represents some weird kind of hope that, yeah, we live in a white world where racism is a constant and white fragility is a thing we must contend with daily, but here is this space where we get to be who we are, to create the food we want, to define ourselves as well. here is a space where we get to say what is authentic because this food is truly authentic because it’s something we created on our terms.
i find that so hopeful. and it’s not just the momofuku group that’s doing that — hand hospitality has been doing this, and there are so many awesome korean american restaurants out there that are making spaces for themselves, for us, like the good fork, haenyeo, atoboy/atomix, hanjan, hwaban, oiji, nowon, etcetera, but momofuku, for me, has been that constant.
and, so, i leave this newsletter on a warmer note than when i started, after i dove into a bowl of noodles and a dish of rice cakes that reminded me that, hey, we make certain choices, and, sometimes, these choices hurt, but we’re not the ones who ultimately lose out. my choice to withhold my writing from non-BIPOC editors might make it so much harder for me to have the writing career i want, but it does not make it impossible.
like i said in my kawi essay on catapult, when we’re denied spaces, we make spaces of our own.
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lol, though, because we all know i need to add this disclaimer: for the record, i don’t hate white people. i have many white friends, whom i love. i have white writer friends, whom i whole-heartedly support and want to see succeed. i know publishing is filled with great people (which includes white people!) who work really hard to get good writing out there. i know Not All White People.