FEATURE
Food and immigration are deeply intertwined . Dishes carry backstories , often dating back hundreds of years and thousands of miles . There are stories of humour , betrayal , and politics found in these foods . There ’ s the oft-debated origins of chicken tikka masala , described by former foreign secretary Robin Cook as a “ true British national dish .” One story attributes its origins to a British Bangladeshi chef in Glasgow adding tomato soup to a curry that was too dry . Cook himself claimed that the massala sauce was added to accommodate the Briton ’ s desire to have their meat served in gravy . Meanwhile , another archetypal British dish , fish and chips , is believed to have been brought over by Jewish refugees . Tea , our most quintessential refreshment , was a key factor in Britain ’ s opium war with China .
Meals and restaurants are used as signifiers . The multitude of dishes and restaurants map out the city in terms of its cultural melange . Like the poems themselves , like the city they are set in , the dishes unfurl into their connotations . Into the stories inside them .
Eating dumplings conjures bittersweet memories of happy meals shared with his mother , now replaced
“ Even / if you beat us down in the street / shout profanities at us when we sneeze / blame pandemics on us and our eyes .”
with phone calls talking about food . A pizza hut provides a shelter in times of turbulence “ despite the crumbling tenements / despite the racism .” A collection of online reviews left for a takeaway chicken place shows multiple reviews left per day for days in a row , a tragicomic relic of April 2020 .
In this light , simple things like ordering an irn bru with your Indian food seem more significant .
It all ties into the central message . “ It ’ s much more common now ,” he says “ that people live far away from their family , or their origins , and the place they were born . I think one of the results of this is a feeling of disconnection , of not necessarily feeling like you fit into certain boxes . There ’ s still so much emphasis put on origins or ticking boxes on forms of what identity you are .”
Wai Keung ’ s writing intends to provide an “ alternative narrative ” that “ its okay to be mixed and its okay to not necessarily feel like you belong in one or the other categories its okay to belong to multiple categories and that ’ s beautiful .”
For Wai Keung , language and food have the same innate ability to reach across boundaries .
He recalls , as a child , listening to Dylan Thomas ’ “ Under Milk Wood ” on cassette and “ not being able to understand any of it but finding it really joyful .” As with food , the language embodies this bridging of divides . The joy of a euphonious sound is like the taste of good food , it doesn ’ t need to be understood .
Growing up around his grandparents , their
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