The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
MiC
Moon Cafe and kindness
during COVID-19
JESSICA KWON
MiC Columnist
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When I sat down with Moon
Choe, owner and operator
of Moon Cafe, a Korean res-
taurant and frozen yogurt
shop on State Street, for a
40-minute interview, I’ll ad-
mit I expected something
of a sob story: a few cliché
sentiments
about
being
down on his luck and need-
ing students to stop by so he
can pay the bills. What I got
instead was a chance to gain
new insights on laissez-faire
parenting, the subtle rac-
ism that is a hallmark of the
immigrant experience and
the private joys he is able to
embrace from the COVID-19
pandemic, among other top-
ics of discussion. Choe is full
of surprising wisdom, which
he dishes out freely, sans
condescension.
As soon as you walk in, Moon
Cafe comforts you. The walls
are painted yellow and pur-
ple, clashing with the black-
and-white
checkerboard
floor. Large-framed, abstract
art prints hang on the walls,
and the entire stretch of a
mantel piece is lined with
small figurines. The eclec-
tic interior reminds me of
the yummy hole-in-the-wall
eateries my friends and I
frequented during our high
school years back at home
and immediately assuages
those requisite nerves I feel
as a newcomer to the jour-
nalism scene.
Choe is in his early 60s and,
despite his gray hair, looks
much younger than his years.
On the afternoon that I walk
into his shop, he wears wire
glasses, a yellow University
of Michigan hoodie (like
the true Michigan dad he
is) with a few sauce stains,
comfy sweatpants and pad-
ded slides with Puma socks.
He’s dressed, in other words,
for a long shift at the restau-
rant. Choe is thoughtful and
very eloquent. Though he
gestures for me to take a seat
at the booth in front of him,
he never quite settles into the
bench facing me. Instead, he
hovers by it, always ready to
take a call or hand a custom-
er their order.
I’m caught off guard when
Choe begins the interview by
throwing me the first ques-
tion: he wants to know what
my position at The Michigan
Daily is. I tell him I’m a Se-
nior MiC Editor, and he nods
and replies that his daughter,
Gina, also used to hold a Se-
nior Editor position at The
Daily during her undergrad-
uate years. In our brief con-
versation, he mentions his
children’s academic achieve-
ments several times. I can
tell by the way he casually
namedrops “neuroscience at
Princeton” that he speaks of
his son and daughter fondly
and often.
Much of Choe’s identity is, in
many ways, tied to his role as
a father and husband. Short-
ly into our conversation,
Choe takes a phone order
and calls out to the kitchen:
“Yeobo? Spicy pork!” (Yeobo
is a pet name, roughly trans-
lated from Korean to “dar-
ling” or “honey.”) Later, she
calls him dangshin — another
sweet term of endearment —
when they’re working in the
kitchen together. While try-
ing to put into words what
it’s like to work with his wife,
he chuckles and says, “I can-
not think of any bad things.
Just wake up early in the
morning, eat together — we
always eat together … there’s
no special meaning, we’re
just married … and then we
spend time together. That’s
it.” The restaurant is a two-
person operation. Last year,
they employed a couple U-M
students part-time, but now,
since business is slower than
usual, it’s just Choe and his
wife, Yoon, running the cafe.
Choe and Yoon, along with
their son and daughter, im-
migrated to America from
South Korea nearly 15 years
ago and eventually settled in
Ann Arbor, Mich. During his
career, Choe worked in the
automotive industry for 32
years. (His engineering back-
ground shows in the way he
tends to speak in exact fig-
ures, precise times and per-
centages.) When he retired a
couple years back, he decided
he wanted to take on “fresh
and new” work. “My (chil-
dren) grew up here in Ann
Arbor … so it is our town,” he
tells me. He decided to open
a frozen yogurt shop to meet
new students, and he calls
this new job a different
type of “good stress.”
In addition to frozen yo-
gurt, Moon Cafe serves Ko-
rean food, which according
to Choe, is simply “healthy
food… It’s homemade, like
Mom’s cooking.” There are,
however, many other Ko-
rean restaurants in Ann Ar-
bor. When I ask Choe what
makes his restaurant differ-
ent from the others, I expect
him to tell me that he has
some special recipe passed
down from his ancestors or
even that he also serves fro-
zen yogurt — which is so de-
licious that it’s a valid point,
in my opinion. But instead,
he refuses to justify my ques-
tion with an answer, out of
solidarity with the other Ko-
rean spots on campus. “Ko-
rean food is Korean food. I
respect the restaurants… we
work all together,” he says.
YOON KIM
MiC Columnist
Growing up as a first-gen-
eration Korean American
in the Korean church, I was
taught to think of others
first: take care of the younger
ones in our community, be
on standby to help my par-
ents whenever needed, don’t
start eating until the eldest at
the table takes the first bite.
In my family, love was often,
and almost always, sacrifi-
cial. And while I am incred-
ibly grateful for my back-
ground and recognize the
character and values it has
instilled in me, I think it also
gradually conditioned me to
disregard myself and my own
needs. I quietly taught my-
self I never needed to be at
the center. Seeking help was
unnecessary, self-indulgence
was never the answer and
the extent of my daily pro-
ductivity was a measure of
my internal strength. I grew
up never allowing myself to
be “that person” who needed
to take a day off at work or
gratify their whims, and I re-
member thinking as a child
that the last thing I should
even do was ask my mom to
buy me a candy bar or some
other trinket displayed on
the sides of the cashier line.
So when the term “self-care”
resurfaced in popular media
several years ago, I naturally
scoffed and brushed it aside
as just a trend for the privi-
leged — those who could af-
ford to splurge on Lush bath
bombs, essential oil diffus-
ers or ten-step skincare rou-
tines. In my mind, self-care
was just another way for rich
people to make excuses for
themselves, and to be honest,
I regarded it as an activity
only white people participat-
ed in because I had only seen
it as such. But especially after
attending the teach-in host-
ed by United Asian American
Organizations (UAAO) for
Asian American and Pacific
Islander
Heritage
Month
on March 31 about burnout
and anti-capitalist self-care,
I have come to understand
that self-care is not for the
privileged but, in fact, for all
— and it is especially for the
marginalized, for those who
cannot afford to think twice
about their self-preservation.
As explained in UAAO’s pre-
sentation, though self-care
has been commodified into
a ten-million dollar industry
by U.S. capitalism, the origins
of self-care actually stem
from anti-capitalist roots in
the Black Power movement
of the 1960s and 70s.
fulness techniques like yoga
and meditation while in
prison. For these organizers,
often Black queer women,
the idea of maintaining their
health and preserving their
existence was not only a
means of survival but an act
of political warfare.
Self-care quickly be-
came community care,
a term illustrated by Dean-
na Zandt that describes larg-
er methods of maintaining
the health and safety of one’s
community and collectively
resisting the oppressive na-
ture of our capitalist society.
In 1972, the Black Communi-
ty Survival Conference held
in Oakland, Ca. provided
resources about the Party’s
free community-service pro-
grams, such as healthcare
clinics, local transportation
and free breakfast programs
that became a means of sur-
vival and support against
the harassment and violence
inflicted upon Black people
by the police and federal
government. In a white-
dominated, capitalist society
where leaders, institutions
and systems failed to protect
and fulfill their needs, active
self-care translated to caring
for one’s community in a way
that would ultimately lead to
structural change.
While I used to roll my eyes
at the phrase “self-care” and
only throw the term around
lightly, I realized the weight
of what true self-care for
me meant when I could
no longer afford to dismiss
it— when I physically could
not breathe under the im-
measurable distress caused
by the reality of our society.
When I heard about the At-
lanta shootings on March
16, I needed to stop what-
ever I was working on and
do something, anything, that
would offer me some sem-
blance of solace and healing.
That night, my roommates
and I had a long discussion
about the news and talked
for several hours. All of us
were at a loss of words and
still processing what had
happened, and I think we all
knew we needed to simply be
together in that space.
In the days following the
shooting,
as
more
news
sources
started
revealing
the names of the victims and
social media exploded with
threads of who and what
was responsible and which
organizations
to
support,
the weight of what had hap-
pened continued to steadily
creep into my being. I had an
online interview for a sum-
mer internship scheduled
two days after the event, and
I remember the coordinator
reaching out to the appli-
cants the morning of March
17 to give us the option to re-
schedule in case we were not
in the right headspace for an
interview. While I genuinely
appreciated the email and
recognized that it would be
helpful for many, I told her
I was fine. I could handle it,
I thought to myself. There
was no need for the hassle of
altering this other person’s
schedule for my own conve-
nience.
Poetry and technicality: Amanda
Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb”
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 15
At President Joe Biden’s in-
auguration on Jan. 20, 2021,
22-year-old Amanda Gorman
delivered an original poem,
“The Hill We Climb.” The
Los Angeles resident and
Harvard College graduate
made history as the youngest
known inaugural poet, spark-
ing admiration and conversa-
tion in the following weeks.
Her poem isn’t without criti-
cism, however. Some people
have taken to the comment
sections in newspapers like
The Hill to demean her val-
ues with matters of techni-
cality. Check out Reddit’s r/
Poetry subreddit, a place to
share and discuss published
poetry, and you’ll find simi-
lar sentiments. One user said,
“The meter is all over the
place. The wordplay is inane.
It’s full of patriotic platitudes
and contains nothing new or
surprising. It wouldn’t in-
spire anyone at any time ex-
cept Americans, today.”
So, I am inclined to ask, what
makes a good poem? The
structure? Its impact? I’ve
heard various people com-
mend the artist yet criticize
the poem for things such as
“clichés” and
“frustrating
meter.” Additionally, others
have praised “The Hill We
Climb” for its messages and
ELIZABETH SCHRINER
MiC Columnist
pacing but question whether
it is “technically strong.” Re-
gardless, I think that there is
great merit in the work as a
piece of art. Art and creativ-
ity can be important tools for
inspiring people, and Gor-
man utilized them to do just
that. A Forbes article says,
“Gorman has produced po-
etry and studied sociology, so
in combining complex social
science into an art form, she
has developed a unique of-
fering in both fields.” I’d have
to agree.
Journalists,
teachers
and
YouTubers alike have begun
analyzing Gorman’s piece,
noting references to the Bible
and other poets’ work. Per-
sonally, I hear rhythms and
repetitions that remind me
of the musical “Hamilton.”
There are two references to
the musical within the poem,
in addition to commentary
on current events. The sig-
nificance? Gorman is pur-
poseful in her words and pre-
sentation. The accessibility
of her piece, though indiffer-
ent to the poem’s technical-
ity, is, bluntly put, incredible.
There is still value that can
be measured in the concise-
ness of words and density
of thought within it, but the
poem’s reach to general audi-
ences should be considered
invaluable. The feelings it
evoked in countless people,
even if only for a moment,
have been monumental (just
check out the positivity re-
lated to #AmandaGorman on
Twitter). Gorman’s position
as an inaugural poet gave her
a platform to deliver a mes-
sage in a moving way, reach-
ing those who previously
wouldn’t have given poetry a
second thought. I think this
is one area that she succeeds,
not just in her poem, but in
her empowering execution.
In her delivery, Gorman’s
presence exudes strength,
but her words also reflect
pain. Poignant lines remind
young Americans — not un-
like Gorman — that our work
is not done. We must strive
for progress in a society that
is fast-paced and continu-
ously evolving. Accommo-
dating changing times also
means acknowledging the
dark that remains. In doing
so, and in the words of Gor-
man herself in “The Hill We
Climb,” perhaps we might
“raise this wounded world
into a wondrous one.” What
exactly does it mean “to
forge a union with purpose?”
Can love truly “become our
legacy?” Will the poem that
implores such affirmations
be remembered and recited
for years to come? has to
tell. If anything, the call for
light and unity is one that we
needed.
Yassmine El-Rewini/Daily
Design by Sarah Chung/Daily