In Vietnamese popular mythology, every family is said to have three kitchen gods in their house. Their altars are placed by the stove to watch over the family, ensuring they treat each other well and that all matters of the home are in order. Growing up in Vietnam but having lived away from home and family for a decade, I began unpacking traditions and rituals I grew up with as performance to find ways to interpret them in my own life. Fifty years after the beginning of large-scale migration from Vietnam to the United States, the immigrant experience of Vietnamese people of my generation is reshaping the narrative around our identity in America. By deciding what aspects of our culture to preserve and make our own, we serve as a living connection between cultures. The Kitchen God Series uses the imaginative landscape of Vietnamese myths to explore the meaning of home-making to young Vietnamese people in New York City. What would a kitchen god see if they could look into our lives?
