One time, when my mom asked what I wanted for dinner and I said “noodles.”
“We’re Cantonese. We eat rice for dinner.”
My mom would have been happy to have had pizza or meatloaf for dinner, but noodles for dinner? Oh no, that’s a line she will not cross. So I threw me in a temper tantrum (and this was me as an adult, visiting my parents only a few years ago).
Food laws feel like the most oppressive thing to me — I don’t care about cultural rules or allergies, my values and auto-immune response will not win over my right to eat tasty things.
So even though my people are traditionally rice farmers, one morning I committed the ultimate betrayal — I made my own noodles.
