Kim’s Convenience: On now at Soulpepper

By Denise Balkissoon

Esther Jun as Janet and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as her father, Mr. Kim

Every second-gen* daughter of a workaholic immigrant father should go see Kim’s Convenience. Mr. Kim may be Korean, not Trinidadian, and he’s a shopowner in Regent Park, not an electrician-turned-politician in Scarborough, but I’m pretty sure he got his schtick from my dad. Item A: fatherly concern wrapped up in insults. Guaranteed my dad has come out with just what Mr. Kim asks Janet: “Why not do something ‘real’ and make your your low-earning, arty job a ‘hobby’? What? Why are you mad now?” Item B: Brutal, bone-cutting arguments about who owes who what, in terms of money, time and respect in this new land where none of the traditional rules apply. Item C: Oceans of intense love tussling for shelf space with old-school notions of masculinity, culture and honour.

Every member of the Kim’s cast did a fantastic job breathing real personalities into the classic immigrant archetypes that we think we understand, but probably haven’t though enough about. As a note-perfect Eau de Convenience Store wafted from the stage, Mr. and Mrs. Kim conversed in Korean, yet the audience kind of knew what they were saying. So real, and so brilliant.

I can’t say if Kim’s Convenience is actually Toronto’s play of the year because I am a boor who never goes to plays. But in this one, I saw myself, and I saw my city, not just its hardworking past, but its brave, mongrel future.

Kim’s Convenience is on now at the Young Centre in the Distillery. It’s almost sold out, but there are still tickets left in mid-June. Grab ‘em, now. 

*Or maybe I mean first-gen? Copy editors and genealogists, help me out here.

Tags: family, immigrants, Korean, theatre, Toronto, work

Happy Birthday to Us!

The Ethnic Aisle turns one this month! We’re having a party to celebrate, and would love for you to join us. And now, some reflections on the first year by Nav Alang and Denise Balkissoon

Tags: Toronto

The Shipment: On now at Harbourfront

By Septembre Anderson

If you’re looking for a soft and fuzzy feel good play to ease you into a discussion of racism, then Korean-American playwright Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment isn’t for you. While “dissect[ing] what it means to be [B]lack in America,” Lee pulls no punches, spares no feelings and handles no one with kid gloves.

The five-person production opens with the talented Douglas Scott Streater performing a stereotypical, in your face, potty-mouthed stand-up comedy routine á la Chris Rock, Paul Mooney or Richard Pryor. Ripping into the nearly all-white audience, the routine touches on reverse racism, colour blindness, stereotypes, white privilege, the evolution of racism (overt vs. nuanced and subtle) and the fallacy of post-racialism. The play then segues into a series of sketches that delve further into stereotypical Black caricatures: the drug dealer, the hyper-religious church lady, the dancer, the convict and the dude on the block who is always going on about “F*ck school man. I just wanna be a rapper.” Streater, Jordan Barbour, Jennings, Prentice Onayemi and Amelia Workman perform in a hilarious, deadpan style.

In the second section of the production, preconceived notions about both racial stereotypes and the audience are truly thrown on their heads. The actors all gather for a party on-stage.  Through their interactions and the devolution of the party (Streater’s character has a depressive episode), we realize that not all of the “characters” onstage are necessarily “Black,” even if the actors playing them are. Prentice eloquently calls this “designating self by designating other,” and the audience is meant to struggle to decide who this “other” actually is. What is the race of the group of characters? Are they white, Black?

The beauty, ingenuity and intelligence of The Shipment is that the play is truly meant to be experienced and viewed differently by every person in the room. Each audience member brings their own preconceived notions about race and racism to the performance and those thoughts and feelings can be perceived throughout. “This show was not meant to be a painting on the wall that the audience sits and consumes,” said Jennings. The play was entertaining and extremely thought provoking, but the show, for me, was in the audience. What did they laugh at? What made them squirm? Would they get angry? Riffs on bestiality and pedophilia were met with stone cold silence while Black stereotypes were met with raucous laughter; when Streater turned the microscope on white people, all that could be heard were nervous chuckles.

One of the (many) problems for the Black community in North America is that we are rarely the ones telling our tales. Non-Black directors, writers and screenwriters produce and narrate our stories further rendering the Black community voiceless. There is power in the story and storytelling, but with the exception of a small handful of film producers – namely Spike Lee, John Singleton and modern day minstreler Tyler Perry – we just aren’t telling ‘em. The Shipment was enjoyable and dialogue about race and racism is great, but I’m still not sure how I feel about the Inception-like Korean-telling-white-people-all-about-Black-people storytelling.

THE SHIPMENT runs until Saturday, May 12, at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre.

Tags: Asian, black, play, race, representation, theatre, Toronto, whiteness

Ethnichat: Religious Holidays for Everyone!

Our Renee Sylvestre-Williams wrote about whether we in Ontario should have more religious, more inclusive religious holidays. We later then had a Twitter chat – or as we call them, an Ethnichat – about the topic.

Would Hamburgers Halal Be As Popular As Burger’s Priest?

By Simon Yau

My stomach might be racist. I’m not certain yet, but I arrived at this concern when I asked myself an honest question—is The Burger’s Priest weird?

I mean, they serve burgers. That in itself is not weird. But it’s also a Christian-themed restaurant, with Christian-themed menu items, a Christian name, Christian scripture written on the wall and a strict Sunday policy that closes the joint down so the owners can ostensibly go to church.

Whenever I’m standing in one of the Priest’s notoriously long queues, staring at the church collection pan that serves as a tip container, reading bible verses on the wall, then eventually ordering a Noah’s Ark, it all seems like a mild novelty that I can tune out. But this place isn’t being ironic. It’s actually owned by evangelical Christians.

Which is fine!

Alls I wonder is how much my willingness to turn a blind-eye to overt meal/religion line-blurring has to do with tasty burgers, and how much has to do with my varying levels of cultural acceptance and comfort regarding race and religion.

The most obvious thought exercise would be to imagine a burger place with another religion as a theme. So let’s close our eyes and think real hard about other potential religious fast food joints and whether they’d be quite as lauded at the Priest.

***

Buddha Burger

I know, Buddha Dog exists already, and is relatively successful. In general, I think our culture finds Buddhism and anything zen or exotically east Asian quite acceptable. Buddhists are harmless. Like they’re literally non-violent, aren’t they? Even if the place was overtly trying to market Buddhism to you, it’d be acceptable because they’d be totally chill about it. Also, the decor of this place would be amazingly Pier One chic.

Verdict: Guaranteed smash amongst the vegan crowd. Less mainstream foodie appeal. The hot dog dudes need to get on this already.

Gabbai’s Grill

No bacon. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a Jewish themed burger. This might be kind of an issue with hamburger snobs. On the other hand, I personally find Kosher beef to be tastier than its unclean comparable. Maybe it’s all in my head but whatever.

Here the religious aspects start to get dicey though. Sure, we go to Jewish delis but they aren’t trying to impose religion on us—these are just places owned by members of the Jewish community. How amenable I might be of an establishment that had all the information about how to ritually convert to Judaism painted on the wall really depends —mostly on if that information is presented in an entertaining manner. Comic book form? No problem!

The decor may also be an issue. Reclaimed church pews and collection plates are kind of trendy for some reason, while antique menorahs may never be Globe Life cool. Strange, how that is.

Verdict: Decent chance of success. It might depend on how tongue-in-cheek the theme is executed, but I’m assuming we’re playing things relatively straight here. It also seems slightly more exotic to people who know what a priest is, but what the hell is a gabbai? Finally, would unfamiliarity with religious iconography make the decor less palatable to customers despite equally tasty food?

Hamburgers Halal

Ok, lets just be honest. If a dude from my local mosque opened a burger shop that was Islamic themed, featuring religious iconography in the interior design and had scriptures from the Qur’an on the wall, I would probably find it weird. I don’t know a whole lot about Islam. It isn’t something I think most people know about unless you make a point to know about it, unlike Christianity which is entrenched as part of North America’s cultural fabric.

Also, I’d be like—why did you open a burger joint? That might be an ignorant question, but also one I don’t think would require a lot of defending.

Inevitably, this place would get labelled a “Middle Eastern Burger Place” even if they served normal burgers. Like “Lebanese Pizza”. Which I learned is often, in Toronto at least, just cheap regular pizza.

Verdict: Outlook uncertain. Good food is good food, so hipsters would love this place. It would quite literally be the anti-Burger’s Priest. Midtown families may not be as enthusiastic. I don’t know what that says about midtown families or my completely arbitrary opinions of them, but that’s what I think. I’m also not convinced people would drive across the city to eat here, but it could become a pretty popular local joint.

***

So basically, no. No other religion could pull off what the Burger’s Priest does except MAYBE Buddhism. But those burgers would probably be terrible. Did I miss anything? I ran out of alliterative world religion restaurant names after three.

As for my original question: is the Burger’s Priest weird? Only inasmuch as most people don’t seem to find it weird at all. And if we’re being honest, isn’t that a little weird?

It doesn’t matter though, I probably won’t be back to the Priest for a while. Not because I find it offensive—I just really hate long lines.

Tags: burger, burger's priest, food, halal, religion, Toronto

Compelled to “Do Jewish”

By Lea Zeltserman

Here’s a scenario my 16-year-old self could never have imagined: the day when, eight months pregnant, I found myself on the phone with a mohelet* discussing how to make the non-Jewish family members of the father-to-be feel involved in a brit milah. What to do about the God word. Trying to imagine a bris with more non-Jews in attendance than Jews. How did this happen?

*A mohel, or sometimes female mohelet, is the person who perform the brit milah, or bris—the Jewish circumcision ceremony.

A bit about that 16-year-old self. I grew up in Edmonton, where Jewish was a word with solid definitions. It meant you lived in the west end, and on holidays your family drove downtown to either the Conservative Beth Shalom syngagogue, or the only-marginally-more-strict Orthodox Beth Israel around the corner. It meant Hebrew school, Hebrew camp, Jewish youth group. A Bat Mitzvah, a Holocaust education trip to Poland, and, in my case, kibbutz in Israel after high school. Also, Shabbat dinners and a lot of turkey bacon.

Judaism was the default setting, and I’d always assumed that it would stay that way. In other words, I’d just keep doing the same things without thinking about it or putting too much effort into it.

But in university I gravitated towards feminism, activism and other -isms. I grew dreadlocks, wore chunky black combat boots, shouted slogans at protests. I studied in Africa and taught English in Asia. I moved closer and then further from my Jewishness.

Eventually I ended up in Toronto, interning at the magazine where I met C. Early on I told him it was important to me that my children would be Jewish. Baptism was not an option. He was raised Catholic, in a predominantly white suburb. He said okay. I didn’t think much more about it. Which, I suppose, is how I found myself trying to arrange a bris.

Tags: circumcision, Jewish, judaism, mohelet, religion

Not Quite a Heathen

By Kelli Korducki

Even at my high school Bad Kid worst—when I was failing half of my classes (because, well, I didn’t attend them), sneaking out of the house on the regular, and smoking whatever I could get my ill-behaved fingers on—I never skipped church. While I don’t feel I came from a super religious household, Catholicism was so engrained in my family’s identity that the prospect of opting out of Mass seemed, at the very least, like more hassle that it’d be worth (and, at worst, a guarantee my mom would act on her occasional threat to ship me to a Salvadoran boarding school where “those nuns will fix you.”)

But I’m a heathen now. My brothers are both heathens too. We’ve flown our parents’ multi-crucifix nest and cast aside their religion with it. We don’t bring it up, but I suspect our parents have figured out that we only join them at Mass during visits home out of filial duty.

Truth is, when religion is so deeply intertwined with a family’s cultural makeup, rejecting it outright can feel awkward. And, I suspect this isn’t a terribly uncommon conundrum among many North American children of immigrants, or people who immigrated young enough to this comparably secular society that their spiritual beliefs diverged from those with which they were raised. At random, I polled two of my friends who fit this criteria to see where they stood.

Tags: atheism, catholicism, heathen, islam, religion