"Coming Home Again" Chang-rae Lee, from The New York, October 16, 1995

After adding a few splashes of soy sauce, she thrust her hands in and kneaded the flesh, careful not to dislodge the bones. I asked her why it mattered that they remained connected. "The meat needs the bone nearby," she said, "to borrow its richness," she wiped her hands clean of the marinade, except for her little finger, which she would flick with her tongue from time to time, because she knew that the flavor of a good dish developed not at once but in stages.

(Lee 2).

This passage highlights the relationship between Chang-rae Lee and his mother very well. I found that food is very significant through out this story. It is symbolic because cooking is something that Lee learned from his mother. Lee enjoys his mother’s cooking as well as preparing food alongside her. When she develops cancer in her stomach, it is tragic that she can no longer enjoy food and cooking the way she used to.

Lee describes that while cooking his mother is, “careful not to dislodge the bones,” (Lee 2). Lee’s mother explains that “the meat needs the bone nearby,” (Lee 2). I found this symbolic to Lee’s relationship with his mother. Lee is the meat and his mother is the bone. Lee thinks he wans to become dislodged from his mother, that why he goes far away to Exeter for school. However, he realizes that he truly does need his mother. He misses her once he goes to school, even when he tries to cook on his own he claims he does not cook as well as his mother. When making cabbage and squash, Lee forgets the salt and needs assistance from his mother, his mother says, “I don’t know how you were going to make it without me,” Lee responds, “I don’t know, either,” (Lee 4). After his mother’s death, Lee makes one of his mothers favorite meals for him and his father to eat although it was not the same, “it was too much for two, I made each dish anyway, taking as much care as I could. But nothing turned out quite right—not the color, not the smell,” (Lee 5). This shows the audience that Lee needs his mother similar to how the meat needs the bone nearby.

Food also signifies the only similarity that Lee and his mother shared since she taught him to play basketball. As foreigners, Lee’s parents relied on him for certain translations. For example his mother needed help at the bank, “One day, we got into a terrible argument when she asked me to call the bank, to question a discrepancy she had discovered in the monthly statement. I asked her why she couldn’t call herself. I was stupid and brutal, and I knew exactly how to wound her,” (Lee 3). Because of his parents being foreigners, our narrator goes away to school so he can become successful in American society. When he says he knows how to wound her, its with his cold, unaccepting, words. He knows he can offend his mother by showing her that he is more capable than her. However, he loses apart of himself by doing this. Other than cooking Korean dishes (which he actually cannot do properly without the help of his mother) he does not get to experience his family’s culture because he is trying too hard to breakaway from it. A large regret I could see in Lee’s character by the end of the story was that he went away at Exeter to break away from his family. Although he could not have know his mother was going to be dying, while he is away he misses out spending time with his mother and learning about a lot of their culture, which I think is extremely important.