Dear Jinhwa,
I heard a typhoon swept past Korea and another one may be on its way. I learned this from the news a few days ago, but hearing it directly from you feels different although it’s the same one-line information. I pray that our office and your neighborhood as well as your way to the train station remain safe. Along with Nini inside you.
It’s already September, yet here it still feels like summer. The tank top you gave me is much appreciated, especially as hot and dry weather continues. I find the climate extremely pleasant for I could barely tolerate the humid summers of Korea. But I became aware that the weather was causing concern for those who’ve lived here long. Jinhwa, drought is a serious problem here. Annual rainfall has decreased noticeably along with the amount of water people can use.
On exceedingly hot days, you can see a strange sight common in these streets: water pouring onto the asphalt from an unplugged fire hydrant. Initially I stood staring at it a long while wondering if something went wrong, if it was okay to waste water like this in a drought. Anyway only I got flustered; the residents seemed calm. Some brought their cups and drank the water; others took it away in bottles; still others washed their faces with it. I saw some children playing with water. I don’t know if this practice is confined to the remote street of Harlem where I live, but what I deemed wasteful may be someone else’s deeply ingrained part of life. I’m still not sure.
To tell the truth, I did pause before including marshmallows in my last letter. I vaguely remembered they contained parts of a pig. So don’t feel sorry. It was nasty of me to write about it knowingly. My slyness just might contain some of that animal gelatin.
If I can apologize in advance, however, there’s a story I want to tell you. It’s about my nearest outside, which still stays with me although I didn’t create it. This story is filled with death, so if you don’t feel inclined, please stop reading here. I’m not writing this to torment you. Seriously.
You know my parents have been in the bag business for a long time, right? They started running the store before I was born, so it’s been well over thirty years. In all their years of doing business, they have harbored a pride in that they sell the best leather bags in the vicinity. I spent the better part of my childhood in that store. It was near my house, so I’d watch TV or solve math problems while keeping an eye out for customers. Sometimes they came when I was by myself. On those occasions, it was my responsibility to call Mom or Dad over the intercom between the shop and the house and detain the shoppers for two to three minutes. I’d tell them, “My mother says she’ll be here soon. Take a look around and she’ll be with you shortly. Cowhide of the best quality.”
My parent’s small shop remains a very cozy place for me. On my sporadic visits back home, I first drop by the store, the pungent smell of dyed cowhide greeting me whenever I open the door. The familiar odor used to give me a sense of relief that the store is still going, if not going strong. Until a few years ago, that is, until I met you. I never identified the smell as that of death until I met you and heard your story about you and Nini and the animal rights movement you had just joined. Now that I think about it, Jinhwa, you’re a precious part of the exterior I have created over the recent years.
But Jinhwa, I don’t see any ghosts. Maybe I’m trying not to. Like when I see leather bags hanging in a row in the store. Or when Mom grills the overpriced beef to commemorate my visit. I just watch the meat cook and the oil splash around. Sometimes I look at myself from a distance and invariably spring to my mind some quotes from overly self-conscious male novelists who were popular two generations ago. Despite my feminist and environmentalist education in school and on the streets, I turn into this poor masculine intellectual of the 70s and 80s, when I wasn’t even born.
Recently I read a book called Poor Queer Studies (2020) in class. The author Matt Brim is an assistant professor who teaches queer theory at the College of Staten Island. CSI has the highest rate of students from working poor families among CUNY campuses. When applying for the teaching position, Brim was given the following preliminary question: “What happens in a Queer Studies classroom?” At the time he didn’t understand the intent of the question. Observing poor students’ struggles over various issues in and out of school, however, he started to realize that he was asked not simply how to deal with Queer Studies in a university setting, but how to teach them “to these students, at this school, in this system.” Although the discipline addressed the discriminations and privileges resulting from intersecting identities of race, ethnicity, and class as well as gender, the issue of poverty has been less well canvassed than formerly believed. With this in mind, he began writing the book based on his field experience.
Your letter made me wonder if there’s such a thing as poor veganism. I sometimes hear people joking, “Living on grass doesn’t kill you,” but I feel like a much more complex issue is at stake in poor veganism than eating grass. For example, I wasn’t particularly planning on eating meat, yet the box of cereal I picked up turned out to contain pig parts. Prices have gone up so sharply recently that fruits and vegetables got very pricey. Yesterday I went grocery shopping and bought a hand of bananas, the cheapest of fruits, and treated myself to a bouquet of Korean green onions that cost ten dollars. I needed them to make tteokbokki. An assortment of sausages was the cheapest food available, but the miscellaneous meat of unknown animals looked harmful, so I didn’t buy it. I returned with a block of tofu, Almond Breeze, frozen blueberries, and soy yogurt. I don’t see ghosts, but sometimes I hear your voice.
You never once blamed me for what I ate or used; I guess my guilty conscience prompted this long apology. But it was a story I longed to tell you because I want to go on loving you and share my daily life with you. You are my priceless outside. Can I be the same for you?
P.S. For the first time in a long while, I searched Okja and watched the clips. Her unintentionally cute face reminded me of Nini’s pictures you sometimes show me and made me smile.
Sunbaked,
July
