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