High up in the Umbrian hills of Italy, Chang-rae Lee is spending the summer on a farm where olive groves and vineyards play host to one of America’s most celebrated novelists. Not coincidentally, the farm overlooks the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, an artist residency program that hosted Lee two years ago when he first fell in love…
New York’s celebrated chefs Junghyun Park of Atomix, David Shim of Cote, and Jihan Lee of Nami Nori gather to create a culinary masterpiece to benefit the Korean American community. Last week, top Korean American chefs from acclaimed NYC restaurants combined their superpowers to serve up an unforgettable meal, all in the name of helping…
A pleasant bonus surprise was that my children also started watching these Kdramas with me. They didn’t seem to mind the subtitles, and in fact, my teen-aged daughter begged me for weekly Korean language tutoring. I blame the pandemic for many things, a long and sad list which includes my metamorphosis into a legit, full-blown…
My love affair with the Korean drink, makgeolli, started after a visit with a friend to Washington State. We were off visiting different restaurants and partaking in the various cuisines that Seattle is famous for. On one particular outing, we were dining at a restaurant that was notable for its homemade kombucha. My friend and…
In 1995, when I read Chang-Rae Lee’s impressive debut novel Native Speaker, I was inspired to read every new novel written by a Korean American as it was published. That was not such a difficult task in the 90s, but in the course of the new century, there has been such an explosion of excellent…
We are grieving and feeling a tremendous amount of pain and fear. The escalating rhetoric and violence against Asians culminated in a mass shooting in Atlanta last week where eight people were killed, six of them Asian women, four of them Korean. They were murdered as they worked to support themselves and their families. In the…
NAPABA has established pro bono legal resources to ensure that local communities have legal resources to address the most egregious hate-fueled attacks against our community. NAPABA is the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, an organization of 50,000 Asian Pacific American attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. Led by their Hate Crimes Task Force,…
What in the world is Mukbang? In the last decade, food lovers have discovered and obsessed over a new video genre called “Mukbang” (먹방), which has taken over YouTube, and made millionaires out of a handful of people willing to artfully consume huge amounts of food in front of a captive audience. The popularity of…
My mentor, my friend, and my inspiration, Vernon Jordan, passed away today. As he did for so many individuals, particularly minority professionals, he helped my career immensely – often invisibly and behind the scenes, as was his style. I am forever indebted to him. And, I am deeply saddened by this loss. After a year…
A Korean American Thanksgiving Story The three most dreaded words, according to moms like me who hate to cook, are “What’s for dinner?” It sends chills up my spine when I know I have nothing prepared in advance. It’s awful, really. Some days, it makes me want to run away and never look back. But…