Jenny Dorsey was 28 when she decided to lay claim to a cultural heirloom: a wok. This tool is synonymous with Chinese cooking but for Jenny it was couched in complex emotions and family memories. She speaks about her childhood and the pressure immigrant families face to assimilate. Jenny also unpacks how her wok became a symbol of sadness, shame, and ultimately forgiveness. The second half of the episode transitions from the personal to the political, honing on Jenny’s work as a chef, food writer, and the founder of the non-profit community think tank, Studio ATAO. Jenny shares her thoughts on the impact and limitations that personal essays pose to the food media landscape. Host Arati Menon talks with Jenny about exploring the honesty and beauty of a personal essay while maintaining boundaries so as not to exploit it.
Jenny Dorsey was 28 when she decided to lay claim to a cultural heirloom: a wok. This tool is synonymous with Chinese cooking but for Jenny it was couched in complex emotions and family memories. She speaks about her childhood and the pressure immigrant families face to assimilate. Jenny also unpacks how her wok became a symbol of sadness, shame, and ultimately forgiveness.
The second half of the episode transitions from the personal to the political, honing on Jenny’s work as a chef, food writer, and the founder of the non-profit community think tank, Studio ATAO. Jenny shares her thoughts on the impact and limitations that personal essays pose to the food media landscape. Host Arati Menon talks with Jenny about exploring the honesty and beauty of a personal essay while maintaining boundaries so as not to exploit it.
Read Jenny’s original My Family Recipe essay. Check out Studio ATAO’s toolkits addressing tokenization in food media and how to achieve equitable representation.
My Family Recipe is created by the Food52 Podcast Network and Heritage Radio Network, inspired by the eponymous Food52 column.
My Family Recipe: Estrangement, Identity, and a Wok with Jenny Dorsey
JENNY DORSEY: Over the course of the next few weeks, the wok and I grapple for power. I diligently cook with it every night to mixed success. To learn, I watch YouTube channels of Chinese chefs flipping stir-fries with ease, peer into dingy restaurant kitchens in Chinatown and see the same. I feel left behind and ignorant, but it hurts too much to admit that it's my own fault. I put myself here. I try my hand at tomato and egg, a staple of my childhood, but I'm impatient, leaving the wok too cold as I pour in the eggs. They stick everywhere. I curse and maneuver the wok into my sink, where I scrub away the lacy, sulfuric egg scraps as I hear news anchors speak of China being the next global superpower. The pit in my stomach clenches, as if to tell me you chose wrong.
ARATI MENON, HOST: Hello and welcome to My Family Recipe presented by Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. Thank you for joining us. I'm your host, Arati Menon, also the lead editor of the original essay series on Food52. In each episode of this podcast, I'll be taking you on a journey, as I explore some much loved heirloom recipes and the delicious stories behind them. Here with us today is Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and the founder of the nonprofit community think tank Studio Atao. Two years ago, she contributed an essay to the My Family Recipe series, writing about how mourning a loved one led her to contend with a cultural heirloom that she hadn't yet laid claim to. That heirloom was a wok, a tool that is synonymous with Chinese cooking. Jenny shares that she was twenty eight when she first bought this and details the complex emotions and family memories that accompany the decision to buy it, then season it and cook with it. Welcome, Jenny. Thank you for joining us.
DORSEY: Thank you so much for having me.
MENON: So, Jenny, you spent the first three years of your life living with your grandparents in China. Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and also how relocation and distance played a role in your development?
DORSEY: Yeah, so I was born in Shanghai and my parents quickly, after my birth or shortly after my birth, had to relocate to the U.S. to be students. There's only a window of time where they were allowed after their application. So unfortunately, that meant that I didn't spend a lot of time in my initial few years and my grandparents really raised me. So I came to the U.S. when I was three, and very quickly it was obvious to my parents that I didn't really know them. I don't remember this, but my mom says that she was surprised I didn't remember her. I still seemed enthusiastic but very much was kind of clinging on to my grandparents. And I kind of remember like maybe around five or six just growing up in the small community where my parents were students and my grandma and my grandpa were such a pivotal part of my life. We didn't always have a great relationship, but they were very much, you know, the parents that I didn't have since my family - my family was only the five of us. And both my parents were essentially always away studying or working. So my grandparents were kind of my support system. But at the same time, I was, I soon then also became their support system. So even though they literally took care of me, and, you know, bathed me, and gave me food and whatnot, as I assimilated into U.S. culture, even as a kindergartner, even though my English was initially very, very bad and it developed to be not bad over time, I also was kind of balancing that, like, with my grandparents, I'm also taking care of them in a strange way, which I don't think I really understood or perhaps fully internalized when I was younger. And I think that led to conflict and a lot of resentment and frustration because it always seemed that they were part of this other world. You know, a world that I truly didn't know and didn't have any experience in, because it's not like I'm actively clocking memories when I'm zero to three. And it felt like they were stuck there. And, you know, I'm in a different place and I want to grow and evolve here. And it felt like they were holding me back in a way. And so I think a lot of that was the root source, even if I didn't really understand it, the root source of a lot of conflict or an uncertain, like an uncertain, balance within our family of just trying to figure out our own identities and what it meant to be my own person.
MENON: I can understand that, I mean, the expectations of assimilation and integration can really take a toll on immigrant families, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere. What, what pressure did you feel or perhaps even put on yourself?
DORSEY: I think a big part of it, beyond just getting a hold of the English language, was not standing out in a way that was different, you know. I think what is so interesting is that American individualism is one of our greatest - and I don't mean, like, as in a good way - but just our biggest export. And that is such a indoctrination that every person in the U.S. goes through. I don't even mean every child, like every person that lives here, is indoctrinated into that sort of belief system. And when you are young, you are always kind of trying to find this balance of like you want to stand out and be an individual, be different, right? You want to find whatever your teacher thinks is going to be like your talent, or you always, you want to shine bright and be different from the other kids. But as an immigrant child that is not familiar with the customs of the U.S., and you're also afraid of sticking out or being an individual in the wrong way. And I think so much of my childhood, as well as into my preteens and teens, is literally trying to be an individual in the right way. And there is no written guidebook, right, of how to be cool or how to be unique. Because it's one thing when a white teenager, you know, in wherever state she was wears like, a qipao, and everyone's like, wow, what a cool individual thing to wear to prom. But if I did that, that's like, weird. And so there's all these rules of, like, what you can and cannot do that apply specifically for you. And because your family, who was supposed to, kind of, provide for you, take care of you and your parents are supposed to kind of know everything, right. As a child, you have this idea that your parents know everything and they don't know anything about this stuff. I think a lot of that not only creates pressure to push them away, but also creates a pressure inside the child individual to figure this all out yourself.
MENON: That's a, that's a lot of pressure on a young child. And you write that eventually you lose touch with your parents for quite a while as an adult, but then reached out again after you hear of your grandfather passing away. And your mom says, tearfully, that your, your grandma misses you and that she wants to cook for you. But before, before you're even ready to respond, you decide to order a wok. What prompted that purchase? In fact, when you order one, you stop to ask yourself, does anyone in my family even cook with one? Was it on a whim?
DORSEY: My family and I did not speak for a long time due to a myriad of reasons, but some of which was like, a career in food and just long standing issues of the things that should have been resolved maybe in therapy. But, there, I was going to therapy and they were not. But what it came to the wok, it seemed like, in a way, in a more approachable way to find peace with all this, this stuff that I was dealing with internally. Part of that is trying to figure out who I am within the food world, especially as someone who is a person of color. You're constantly asked to make food of a certain ethnicity of your background, regardless of if you have that expertise. I mean, I've talked about that a lot, and my nonprofit has done a lot of work around tokenization. But as someone who - this was pre, you know, nonprofit's work on that - trying to figure out that space, of like, what does it mean to be Chinese-American and like Chinese food but not really know about Chinese food or, you know, I don't, Chinese people aren't, like, born with a download on how to like velvet chicken. You know, like that's not something that just comes to you. That's something that needs to be taught just like any other thing. And the wok seemed like a way of maybe remembering certain things or learning new things, but at my own pace and a rhythm that I could control, whereas what the hardest thing with my family, and I would argue probably everybody's families, is that you can't control how the other party is going to perceive and receive the stuff that you give to them. So even if I go to my parents and say that I want a certain relationship, I want them to interact with me in a certain way or whatnot, like, that doesn't mean that they will. And that kind of, like, powerlessness, I think, was what I was really struggling with, because being, I wasn't at a place where I could really compromise that, I couldn't figure that out. But this, this wok, this strange symbol of, you know, to many people, Chinese cuisine, that I was very unfamiliar with, seemed like a bridge to that space.
MENON: In fact, that wok had been sitting in your, in your basket for a while.
DORSEY: Yes, it definitely had. And I think another thing is like, you know, you can find woks of all sizes, shapes and prices. And I, I didn't know what - it was like a weird commitment thing, right. It was like, how much research am I going to do to find the right wok? And like, how much money am I willing to spend because I could buy a twenty dollar wok, but does that, like, somehow reinforce that I think it's cheap or that Chinese food is cheap and I don't want to invest in it. You know, there's so many, like, weird thoughts. Maybe weird is the wrong word here, but there were so many kind of different conflicting, confusing thoughts floating in my head. So I couldn't even decide what wok to buy.
MENON: You write, and I quote: "my nostalgia mixes with self disgust, as I season the smoking wok, maybe what I projected at them" - your grandparents - "was fear. Fear that I would not be accepted in this new life where I straddled two worlds, China and America." Would you mind unpacking that for us?
DORSEY: Yeah, I think there is something visceral, I think, for people in the food industry, there's something visceral about cooking that kind of brings you back to like why am I cooking? Who am I doing this for? What is the point of this? Or at least when you're really in the moment? I think sometimes what is hard is when food is also your job, you kind of lose sight of that and you're like mass-producing like so much stuff, you just got to get through service or whatnot. But for me, that particular moment, as I'm, like, trying to learn about the wok and therefore it's getting my undivided attention, not only am I trying to juggle some of things of like, is it hot enough, did I do it right, do I need to season this again? But also, like, why am I kind of, in this space? What am I doing here? Why am I, why am I even making this food? And it's, naturally gave rise to the question of, how come I don't know how to do this? Like, why don't I know how to do this? And that is, that was such a reflection for me just to think about for so long how much I pushed away or how much I was afraid of, and very, very timid to lean into the, my quote unquote "Chinese" proclivities. Because I, I didn't want to be left behind. I didn't want to be seen like, old and stodgy and, and just, you know, like, not, ill-suited to be in this world. Because to me, like the representation of all of that, of all that fear is my grandparents.
MENON: Yeah, you're just doing the best you can, knowing what you know. And on top of, on top of these emotions, you, you speak of experiencing some sort of guilt about not already knowing how to use the wok. And it becomes a kind of symbol to you as you struggle with making childhood staples like tomato and egg and seasoning it properly. What was that wok a symbol of?
DORSEY: You can make anything you can make in a wok, like, in a pan, right. You just get a different result. And so it's not like I was making anything that I hadn't made before. And so usually I can breeze in and make tomato egg in like three seconds because it's like, something I grew up eating and whatever. There's no anxiety involved in that. But this wok added this new layer of like, ‘oh my God, am I going to, like, screw it up somehow,’ and just having to stay in that, analyze it, take a look at it, reflect on it, just like breathe in that anxiety, also. I don't know, I think it brought, like, a new dimension to what I was doing or being a little bit more conscientious and in the moment of what I was cooking and why I was cooking it. A lot of that was realizing, like the wok itself, and the preparation method, beyond flavor, added its own, like, specific type of memory, specific type of, specific point of view. I think that the piece captured the main important sentiment, which is, like, something that can be inanimate, can become such a living, breathing representation of so many ideas.
MENON: You conclude the piece by writing, "what is there to do but to accept myself and start over. This is my work now." Was this a message of forgiveness to your younger self, a kind of release? You know, I'm thinking of you and your sort of never give up cleaning of this wok to sort of, to get some sense of its old gleaming self back. And I'm thinking of, I think of the sloughing of, sloughing off of all layers of your former self. And did you feel like this was a moment of release, a moment of forgiveness?
DORSEY: Yeah, my husband always tells me, like, you got to learn how to forgive yourself. And I think part of that definitely has stayed with me. And he's said that for years. But I also am a big fan of this book called "The Choice Theory" by William Glasser, yeah. Which is all about, like, you kind of, in a nutshell, you just, you choose to do everything. I mean, there's obviously limitations of that. I don't want to talk about structural inequities of what limits your choice, because then we will be in many more episodes. But I think fundamentally what I was coming to a head at, at that point in the story is, well, I can choose to let this overwhelm me and continue to be the sore spot, this moment of sadness, this kind of unresolved tension and conflict. And very much based in a bit of like, self - it's constantly self-pity and self-hate at the same time. I actually think those two are in a way, the same thing. And I could continue to be in that space or I can say, like, I literally can't do anything about the reality of what I am currently experiencing, so I guess I'm just going to keep going.
MENON: We're going to take a very short break and then return to zoom out of this piece and look at Jenny's work with Studio Atao, as well as personal essays as a medium.
BREAK
MENON: Welcome back to My Family Recipe. We're going to transition our chat with Jenny from the personal to the political, something Jenny, that you're very adept at doing, especially in your work with Studio Atao. For our listeners that don't know, can you tell us a little bit more about Studio Atao?
DORSEY: Yeah. So, Studio Atao is a 501c nonprofit community think tank. Our main focus and ethos is how do we change, how do we create change from the ground up, so that we ask people who are actually affected by problems, by issues, by changes that are coming in their future to uplift their recommendations, to uplift what they think will work because the people affected by issues are the best at solving those issues. They have the most stake in it, obviously, and they are literally, you know, in it every day. So we should be listening to them instead of having decisions be handed down, in a top down manner, from people who are not experiencing these issues, don't have a stake in solving these issues, really, and may also benefit from inequity staying the same. So we really want to flip the script on how change in general is looked at and provide ways of others incorporating that sort of methodology into their work as well.
MENON: In the essay, we witness your, your struggle with issues around identity and connection and acceptance. I'm really interested in learning a little bit more about your journey from where we leave you to where you are today, challenging the status quo and using your food and your nonprofit Studio Atao to empower people to have these difficult but effective conversations around change. Take us through that journey a little bit.
DORSEY: I think as someone who has been trying, at this point, been in the food world while had kind of started doing a little bit more writing, was just hitting a lot of the same roadblocks of being tokenized and being kind of stuck in a space where I didn't really feel like I actually could be an individual within the industry that I loved and cared about and the career that I wanted, despite the rhetoric that we're constantly being fed of how much we care about individualism and helping everyone be like who they are. And there was a certain amount of both willful color blindness in that statement, but also just, like, a lack of really understanding all the preexisting things that have, you know, brought us to, kind of, this point, similar to what we were saying a little bit earlier in this podcast about, you know, you can choose to do things, but there's a lot of things that restrict your choice as well. So I think I was struggling with that on a personal level. And after writing this essay and as I started to build out the Studio, and more seriously build out our think tank arm, that was always a driving piece of, how do we really, if, if I were to fix this issue that I'm currently experiencing, how would I like to fix it? How, what, what are the changes that I want to see? Who do I want to see implement it? And how do I want to see those implementations be carried out over time and be actually accountable to folks like myself who would then be affected by those changes? I think it kind of, like, started the process of just thinking about, I'm experiencing this little microcosm of this issue and it is a big structural issue. So how do we tackle the roots of this problem, as opposed to just trying to solve it or fix it for me and my friends?
MENON: Let's talk about personal essays for a bit. They're obviously a very powerful medium, but can also become this box that becomes very difficult for writers, especially marginalized writers, writers of color, to break out of. It's something that as editors in food media, we're thinking about more and more, we're talking about more and more. We are trying to fight more and more. And you've written about how greenlighting personal essays is, is a good place to start. But obviously it cannot end there. And you need to have a much wider range of, of content and do it more consistently across a publication. So, Jenny, do you have conflicting feelings about this form of publishing?
DORSEY: I wouldn't say they're conflicting so much, that I sometimes worry about the personal essay realm becoming a point of deflection for food media to say that they are doing the right, they are doing the work and moving in the right direction without really changing a lot of the problems and systems that are holding us back. And I'll shout out one of our editors, Osayi, who really, you know, made it a point that we include the comment about personal essays cannot be the end all be all of where you're BIPOC representation in food media sits.
MENON: Absolutely.
DORSEY: Because so much of what we see from food media in the personal essay realm is, like, a lot of marginalized writers getting their first story or being able to actually get the literal space, digital or physical, of saying what they want in the world. And that becomes problematic in two ways. One, because, you know, you get stuck in this thing, that you're always having to talk about basically the same kind of things. I'm not saying that every essay is the same, but like, you always have to draw upon your family or this thing that happened to you or whatever, and maybe you don't want to do memoir writing for the rest of your life. But then the other thing is that we are kind of committing to this idea that, marginalized writers always have to give up what are oftentimes painful or very sensitive, if not painful, stories in order to be accepted by the mainstream, that they owe food media something of themselves in order to be accepted into food media society. You know, mostly white writers may never write a personal essay piece, and they can still do reported stories. They can do, still do the videos, they can do all sorts of things. But for marginalized writers, a lot of times the personal essay is kind of this, like, rite of passage almost to get into food media because there is no other way for you to even get, like, an editor relationship. And so, if that, personal essays become, essentially another gatekeeping mechanism for food media, then we haven't actually broken down these barriers, right. We've just created a new barrier called the personal essay barrier that you have to overcome in order to get into food media, which is not the point of all this change.
MENON: And, you know, sort of expanding on that, a week ago in Studio Atao's newsletter, you published an essay by V. Spehar, who is a long time champion for LGBTQ+ leadership in the, in the food space, titled "You Don't Owe Event Organizers a Performance of Your Trauma." It touches on how certain interviews and panels try to capitalize on the pain of marginalized participants, and instead V. offers ideas and strategies for finding better ways to focus the conversation and set boundaries. How do you approach setting boundaries in the, in the very personal conversations that you have at Studio Atao?
DORSEY: Setting boundaries is one of those things that everyone talks about, and it sounds very easy in theory, but the reality is, it's very difficult to set boundaries when you don't really have any power. And so there needs to be some underlying relationship and respect and equalizing of power for boundaries to work, right. It's very hard, not only to set boundaries, but to uphold them. And back to your question about how do we do that at the Studio, I think a lot of this boundary work is built on cultivating relationships.
MENON: Right.
DORSEY: So, if we want to set good boundaries with our own staff, then we have to talk internally, we have monthly team meetings, like, we always encourage everyone to share something personal, like what they've been up to this month. But, like, if they don't want to share, maybe they're seeing someone, you like, whatever, like that's not something that should be pressed. It's kind of like constantly finding ways to always understand where the other person's coming from, have them really consent and buy into what you're doing and have a open channel of, open relationship where they feel comfortable enough to like, talk to you, have a channel of communication to you and let you know if something's wrong.
MENON: An important question for our team, in working on this podcast in fact, is navigating some of these issues and I'd love to get your thoughts on navigating this line between exploring the beauty and honesty of a personal essay and perhaps exploiting it.
DORSEY: Yeah, I think it really comes, again, back down to what the person writing the essay wants to do, how much they want to share, and not, not making them feel like they need to do anything if they don't want to. So I've had personal essay situations where the editor just didn't like the way that I was writing about certain things and worked very hard to basically rewrite it in a tone that didn't fit mine. And that becomes, like, no, editor did not like, force me to tell some traumatizing story I didn't want to tell. But now I'm telling the story through a literal voice that's not mine, which is exploitative and extractive in its own way, right. Because you're taking someone's story and retrofitting it into your vision of that story and not letting them have their, their own say over who they are. So, I think, if anything, that is the, kind of, the quieter, more nefarious sort of extraction versus like editors straight up telling you, you have to include traumatizing stuff, because I think generally people understand you're not supposed to do that.
MENON: Gosh, that's just like, double the trauma to, to, you know, have to tell your story and tell it in someone else's voice because your voice isn't deemed appropriate somehow, or accessible. Before we sign off, Jenny, is there anything that we haven't touched upon in our conversation that you'd like to share with us?
DORSEY: I will say one note that I thought was interesting about this essay, and I think a lot of personal essays that have recipes with it, specifically since we are talking about food media, is that I also think there is a certain kind of learning curve for people who are coming and perhaps looking at that recipe specifically and detaching it from that personal essay piece. Because maybe the recipe is not what they expected. The recipe doesn't fall in line with what they're looking for. And that sort of, that sort of commentary from outsiders can be very difficult for the personal essay writer to contend with, right. Because it's less about the ins and outs of technicality of the recipe, the recipe's about, kind of the memories and all that stuff. That's the point of a personal essay. The main thing that I received on this particular piece was like, the recipe is too hard. And it's, like, too hard by whose standards, right.
MENON: Yeah.
DORSEY: Who gets to decide what is hard or what is not hard? And what does that also, what are the implicit biases behind, like, how easy a family recipe should be and perhaps how easy a Chinese family recipe should be? Like, those are kind of these outstanding questions that food media as a whole for sure, and definitely like kind of personal essay space will have to contend with / is contending with now.
MENON: Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up. These are conversations that, I know I, as an editor of personal essays, but also my fellow editors, have with the writers and, and, and with readers, really, because that's really important for us to anticipate some of these difficult discussions and sort of, expect them and know how to respond. And you also brought up a very important point about what happens when this family recipe is, is extruded from the, from the essay, right. And I just want to thank you, Jenny, for, you know, reminding us that it's OK to have uncomfortable conversations, especially within your own spheres of influence, and it's OK for food to make people uncomfortable. So thank you for standing up against things like tokenization in the food world and challenging the gatekeepers in the food world and fighting for equal access. We have so much to learn from you. I'm thrilled that you could join us on this episode. Thank you, Jenny.
DORSEY: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
MENON: Thank you for listening to My Family Recipe. If you've enjoyed this episode, give us a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to leave us a rating and review so we know just what you think of our delicious stories. Special thanks for this episode to Jenny Dorsey. You can find her essay along with more resources and readings from Studio Atao in our show notes. My Family Recipe is produced by Dylan Heuer and Hannah Fordin. Our Julia Child Foundation fellow is Kelly Spivey, and our audio engineer is Matt Patterson. Coral Lee is Food52 Podcast Network’s producer. Our theme song is Bittoral by Aeronaut. This show is a collaboration between Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. There's much more to read and listen to. Find even more stories at Food52.com and HeritageRadioNetwork.org.
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