The Loneliest Americans

Although I am, by nature, allergic to overwrought food writing, the virality of his Kogi BBQ taco truck came from the earnestness of its message. “Kogi is more than just a taco, right?” he told me. “I’m slinging love out there.”

while most Americans might not be able to tell the difference between me, a forty-one-year-old first-generation Korean immigrant raised in an educated middle-class household, and the first-generation undocumented immigrant from Fujian Province who delivers their meals, that doesn’t mean some bond has been forged out of this misunderstanding.

When I talked to Choi in 2014, he said he wanted to create a menu that represented the Koreatown he had known as a child—a place with Mexican lowriders and mixed-race couples.

Their vision of Asian America—defined by “unite all who will be united”—failed. Not because of the conviction of the actors, but because the flood of Asians who came to the United States after Hart-Celler had no experience with American racism or oppression.

I feel comfortable in these spaces, but I don’t really understand the Asian kids who sit nearby. They, like all Berkeley students, wear lumpy Cal sweatshirts and mostly complain about schoolwork, but they also seem completely uninterested in making friends with people of other races or backgrounds. Their insularity always feels banal and unwarrante