things i wrote.
i write about food and k-pop.
here is a selection. other work can also be found in whetstone, cake zine, pinch, no tokens journal.
from a k-pop fan, with love
catapult, 2021 february - 2022 february
a column about k-pop, blending personal writing with cultural criticism. this is being expanded into a book, i’ll love you forever, forthcoming from henry holt in spring 2025.
essays about korean food: kimbap, ddeok, banchan
taste, 2021-22
“Today, kimbap has come to represent Koreanness. ‘Is hamburger really American food?’ Lee asks. ‘If you go back to the origin, it’s from Germany or something, but ask any American—they think hamburger is their food. To me, kimbap is like that. It doesn’t matter where it really came from. We all grew up eating it, [and] we have our own tricks and tips and preferences on how it’s done.’”
would taylor swift eat my gimbap?
electric literature, 2021 august
“As I gradually opened up to the world, venturing out to meet people, make friends, and learn how much I enjoyed human company, I started to feel the lonely pangs of my singleness, a feeling that had existed before but hadn’t lit up as pain. I still couldn’t think about dating, though, or let myself dwell on my singleness because I had other things to worry about first — becoming financially stable, selling my book, bringing my dog out to Brooklyn from L.A.. It wasn’t difficult, not when I’d already gone fifteen years assuming I’d be single and alone forever — until, one night in 2019, I’m having dinner with a friend and look up to see a stranger making a loop around the room, and I think, well, shit, you’re fucking cute, and, then, there’s Taylor Swift, singing about love in catchy melodies that keep worming their way into my brain and my heart.”
i made this classic korean dish in my bathtub
saveur, 2022 october
“Then there was this: beginning in high school, I was shamed for my body because I was overweight and my Korean community found my body grotesque. For the next decade, I counted calories, restricted foods, jumped on fad diets and Jenny Craig, and worked out obsessively. I loathed myself because, as everyone from family to friends to random ajummas (middle-aged women) in restaurants never hesitated to let me know, I was disgusting. A Miss Piggy who needed to whittle her body down to acceptable standards if she wanted to be a person of value. Naturally, any love for food and any curiosity about cooking, even Korean cuisine, had to be repressed.”
i’m still a virgin in my thirties, not by choice
buzzfeed reader, 2020 july
“My former church leaders might be proud to hear of my continued virginity. I might not have coupled off and fulfilled my God-given purpose of reproduction, but I’m practicing the only acceptable alternative by being celibate — though does it count when it hasn’t been a personal moral choice so much as the only choice? Because the thing is my chastity is the result of years of intentional body-shaming that completely broke me down as a person and disassociated me from my body, so sex wasn’t something I even thought I wanted until I was well into my twenties.”
finding home and comfort in the food of korean american chef eunjo park
catapult, 2019 december
“These dishes feel like home to me, though I struggle sometimes to describe what kind of food this is. It’s not traditionally Korean, but it is very Korean at heart. It’s not “fusion,” not a simple mashing together of flavors and textures. Nor is it amorphously “Korean-inspired” because it’s a very specific, intentional thing, something more intrinsically transformative with its own defined identity.
“This is the food of a Korean American chef named Eunjo Park, taking the food she grew up with, the food she knows, and making something new that’s all hers. This is food that welcomes me.”
how i love her: on depression and suicidal ideation
the rumpus, 2019 february
CW for talk about suicidal thinking and depression.
“When we’re suicidal, we need to believe in something. That is fundamentally what hope is, the belief that there is something out there worth staying alive for. Some might say I should believe in god or some kind of infinite being, but I don’t — I believe in her.”