Making space for ourselves in order to celebrate ourselves

Food Diplomat reflections from episode 2

We just released our second episode of Food Diplomat that featured my fellow Danica, Danica Kim.

I know Danica from when we worked together at a food media studio in Downtown Los Angeles. However, I didn’t really get to know Danica until we sat down and opened up to one another one afternoon over coffee. She grew up in Los Angeles and I’m from Las Vegas, so, we come from worlds that are geographically close together. Yet, the experiences of our upbringing shaped us in unique ways.

We spoke on behalf of her experience as a second-generation Korean American whose parents moved to Los Angeles in order to achieve the American dream. While her parents have been successful at achieving their dreams, she is still uncovering her own dream. It is a struggle of what to preserve as far as tradition and what is worth innovating as the world changes and we evolve as individuals.

Food, from my perspective, is where the heartbeat of our ancestral past can be celebrated. While Danica Kim embarks on her individual path, she has learned to appreciate her roots through the foods that gave her parents a feeling of home. As a young girl, fitting in meant using her souvenir money to buy a sandwich and throw away the gimbap her mom had made. As a young adult, this was reflected in calling gimbap Korean sushi for her non-Korean friends.

All these actions are her making space for others without making space for herself. She chose to do these things so people would be comfortable and accepting of who she is and where she comes from. However, with the recent Asian hate crimes, she has taken the time to reflect on the importance of creating space for herself and her culture. Giving food its proper name is paying respect to the place it comes from and the people who brought it to our tables. As she frames it, “if we love Asian food, then we should also love the people.”

So, to me, she has learned to celebrate and love herself in the midst of all the tension… and this is a beautiful thing.



Check out the full-length episode of Food Diplomat featuring Danica Kim on our Food Diplomat IGTV or YouTube! Then, if you’re in LA, take a trip to Koreatown Plaza to try it for yourself 😉

Do you have a favorite Korean food? Let me know so I can try it!!