College of Arts & Humanities

Food, Family and Home – A Gomo Kimchi Workshop with Eddie Kim

Thinking Culture | School of Culture & Creative Arts | College of Arts & Humanities | ARC Public | Advanced Research Centre
Date: Monday 02 September 2024
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Advanced Research Centre
Category: Academic events, Student events
Speaker: Eddie Kim
Website: thinkingculture.gla.ac.uk/event/food-family-and-home-a-gomo-kimchi-workshop-with-eddie-kim/

Join Eddie Kim of Gomo Kimchi for a kimchi making workshop at the Advanced Research Centre, presented in collaboration with Oaka and Thinking Culture as part of East and Southeast Asian Heritage Month.

Gomo who inspired Gomo Kimchi, along with gomobu (her husband), opened the first Korean grocery store in the Seattle area (called Grand Foods), and my mother, newly immigrated to America, always found solace in grocery stores. It was like her second home, which in turn made it like a second home for my brother and I. And now, whenever I’m in an unfamiliar place, grocery stores are how I make myself feel at home or comfortable, which can be especially important in majority white spaces. Even if it’s a Western grocery store, there’s something about being in a place where the basic ingredients to nourish myself and others can be found.

And now, having ESEA markets and markets from different cultures, serve as both comfort and glimpses into different worlds. When thinking of Gomo Kimchi, and Korean food trends, or food trends from any other culture for that matter, I think about what kind of a perspective into a world these things offer, beyond mere consumerism. People love Korean food these days, but these foods have a story, and these stories have particular, personal meaning for individuals. So each story, while perhaps part of a broad stroke of culture, has its own, individual line. There are nuances, nuances we all share as part of the human experience. So it’s also contradictory in that each story, each perspective is unique, but also part of a larger tableau that makes us who we are as a species.

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