American writer talks about owning Brooklyn deli with his Korean in-laws

Korean-language edition of Ben Ryder Howe’s memoir ‘My Korean Deli’ released


For Ben Ryder Howe, a self-identified WASP working as a literary man on the Upper East Side, owning a deli in Brooklyn was certainly an adventure.

It was in 2002 that Howe, married to Korean-born corporate lawyer Gab, decided to buy a deli in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. It was a family business with his mother-in-law, Kay, who Howe describes as the “Mike Tyson of Korean grandmothers.”

The preppy literary editor from New England ― who works for the Paris Review, one of the most prominent literary journals in the U.S. ― and his tough and fearless Korean immigrant mother-in-law somehow run the deli together while having different visions for the store. Soon, they face challenges, from renovating the store to a robbery.

“My Korean Deli: Risking it All for a Convenience,” Howe’s memoir chronicling his experience running the deli while working as an editor for the Review, has been translated and published in Korea.

Howe, who lived in his mother-in-law’s basement in Staten Island for almost 10 years to save money for the future, offers a hilarious and enlightening reading experience on Korean-American dreams, family, money, as well as the unique and diverse cultural climate in Brooklyn.

There are some colorful personalities in the book, aside from Howe’s in-laws, including the legendary George Plimpton who was Howe’s boss at the Review, as well as Dwayne, the eccentric yet street-smart employee of the store.

Howe told The Korea Herald about his experience owning the deli with his Korean in-laws via email, with much enthusiasm and fun.

Q: What is it like to publish the Korean edition of “My Korean Deli” in Korea? How did Gab and Kay react to the release?

A: It’s something all of us have looked forward to. We were so excited when we found out the book was going to come out in Korea, and the publisher has done an amazing job, not just with the translation but the whole presentation. I love the illustrations.

Q: It is very rare to live with one’s parents for almost 10 years. Do you ever regret that you lived in your in-law’s basement for such a long time?

A: If I did not live with my wife’s family for all that time, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, which is, according to my Korean nieces and nephews, the first white American man in history to turn into a “harmony” (“halmeoni,” or grandmother). As a result of living with Kay, I always have little packages of food in my pocket for children (“Here, would you like some fish sausage? Just put the whole thing in your mouth.”) and keep everything I own in Tupperware and plastic bags. Interesting things happen when you spend that much time sharing a small space with people different from you. I didn’t used to wake up in the middle of the night just to make myself ramen noodles.

Q: Were there any similarities between owning your deli and working for the Paris Review? How did you manage to do two very different jobs at the same time?

A: The Paris Review is known as a highbrow intellectual place with salons and celebrity-filled parties, the opposite of a convenience store in many ways. But they’re more similar than you would think. They’re both small, with lots of eccentric traditions and not very much money-making potential. They’re both resistant to change. Both serve a lot of liquor.

Q: You have very humorously ― yet with much insight and analysis ― depicted the culture of Korean immigrants in the States in your book. As a self-proclaimed WASP, how did living and working with your Korean in-laws change you as a person? And what never changed?

A: There are things about Korean culture I couldn’t understand at first ― for instance, if you walked in on my wife’s family eating lunch at home, you’d see three or four people on the floor squeezed around a table barely big enough for one bowl of mul kimchi, while an eight-foot-long dining table sat completely empty a few feet away. I also couldn’t understand why all the businesses in Korean neighborhoods stayed open 24 hours a day (Did Korean people really go grocery shopping at 4 a.m.?), or why my wife’s family filled up an entire closet with spam, which they would eat with almost anything. (I once caught one of my wife’s relatives in the middle of the night eating spam with strawberries.) This is the thing, though: when you live with people from somewhere else, your own world looks a lot different. Things in everyday life that used to seem self-evident ― how to talk, what to wear, etc. ― begin to seem arbitrary and pointless. I hope that as a result of living with my wife’s family I’ve become more open-minded and questioning. I still won’t eat spam with strawberries, though.

Q: It was interesting to see how Gab, who is a corporate attorney in the States, would fear the possible outcomes of not following Kay’s Korean “samchilil” postpartum-care regime. How do you understand your wife’s (arguably uncanny) bond with Kay’s Korean way of life while working in the U.S.?

A: Well, the obvious answer to this question, as any harmony can tell you, is that intelligence is passed down through daughters, and samchilil is an intelligent thing to do. You don’t want to have soft teeth. But the interesting thing to me is that in America anyone can supposedly be anything they want, whether they’ve just come here or been here a long time, and yet as we get older all of us find out that there are things about ourselves we just can’t escape, no matter how hard we try. We’re programmed to like certain things and be certain ways. I think Korean culture is very compatible with American culture, which is why Korean immigrants often thrive here. (We both like big breakfasts!) I think it will continue to be passed down here for many generations, which is why my wife felt she had no choice but to do samchilil. She didn’t want to eat nothing but miyeokguk for an entire month, but it was part of something she can’t escape.

Q: There are two very big personalities in your book, aside from Kay: your boss George Plimpton at the Paris Review, and Dwayne, the long time employee of your store. What did you learn the most from their lives?

A: What I learned from George Plimpton ―- not only one of the most famous writers in America, but an impossibly dashing figure who was nearly always the most charming person anyone who knew him had ever met ― was not to take yourself too seriously. George could have been insufferably egotistical, but I think being as gifted as he was actually made him humbler.

What I learned from Dwayne ― a guy with a history as a violent street thug ― was that almost nothing feels better than an honest day’s work followed by falling asleep on the couch watching TV with your kids.

Q: Owning convenience stores ― or dry cleaners ― is often perceived as the symbolic profession of Korean-Americans. Were the kinds of challenges you faced while owning the store different from the those of Kay’s?

A: I had to learn how to keep standing at the cash register even after my feet got numb, and how not to be scared (or at least not show fear) when you think a mob might be coming to burn down your store. Kay was already quite proficient in these things, so for her the challenge wasn’t as big. Then again, she was older, and the job of a deli owner or a dry cleaner is really for someone in their thirties or forties. After that age it’s a dangerous occupation, as we found out.

Q: How is your child (or children) being raised? Do your in-laws insist on the Korean way of parenting?

A: We try to honor both traditions, meaning they’re being raised schizophrenic, which is pretty much the New York way, given the number of couples here from mixed backgrounds.

Q: You eventually sold your deli. What do you miss the most about being a deli owner?

A: As a writer, there are times when life gets pretty dull. When my wife and I talk at the end of the day, the subject of our conversation tends to be, “Well, what did you have for lunch today?” Or, “Guess who I ran into in the elevator!” When we had the deli, it was more like, “Today an Eskimo parked his dogsled outside the store, came in and bought one hundred dollars of watermelon-flavored chewing gum.” It was completely unpredictable. You had no idea who was going to walk in or what kind of challenges you would face. From that perspective, being the owner of a store in New York City is probably one of the best jobs in the world.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)