Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

Reading Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee reminded me of a cultural studies class I took last quarter that focused on the politics of food. In that class some of the text we engaged with focused on the Korean War and Korean adoptees, two topics that I was both quite unfamiliar with. Dictee reminded me specifically of the text I read discussing the war brides who, upon immigrating to America, were cut off from their traditional foods which caused them extreme physical and mental suffering. The idea of homesickness through food resonated with me deeply because to me food is such a central part of my identity as well as a source of comfort, and reading about how these women would use their limited resources to make budget, hardly actually similar but the best available option versions of their cultural foods; how they would become severely underweight because they just couldn’t stand American food; and how even on the rare occasions they would have access to their cultural food they would have to hide it from their disapproving husbands broke my heart. Dictee handles similar themes of being forced away from home and being forced under the oppression of another culture, and was therefore similarly moving to me. From Dictee I am actually also reminded of the poem “A Different History” by Sujata Bhatt, where in the last stanza she remarks on the cruel irony of those who have grown up in the countries after oppression and grow up knowing and speaking and finding meaning and creating meaning and essentially having the oppressor’s language become theirs. And when it is the only culture you have ever known, doesn’t it become a bit like home? And if you live in it long enough, is it bound to become home?

I think I might want to incorporate themes of homesickness or nostalgia into my radio as those are emotions I often find myself splashing in. There is the reflecting on what has been and then there is the reflecting on what it might have been.