Gifting Mushrooms

Anna Tsing’s multi-sited ethnography of the matsutake mushroom traces a commodity chain that provides Japan with these coveted fungi. Forest animals such as elks and bears love the smell and bloody their muzzles for the matsutake while certain slugs and insects avoid the smell. Slicing with metal knives upsets the mushroom spirits. While reading I also thought of the recent Oregon standoff and how Tsing complicates this narrative by including the histories of the Kalamath as well as Lao, Mien, Hmong and Khmer refugee-survivors who reinterpret their lives in Oregon foraging for mushrooms as “freedom” in the context of lack of options for labor following Kalamath land dispossession and decentralized assistance for refugees.

Tsing’s discussion of assemblages of precarity made me rethink aspects of my parents’ resettlement experiences in the U.S. My family arrived in the Carter years but resettled primarily during the Reagan years which they recall as difficult. My parents come from rural villages (Kien Svay and Takeo) but were able to complete high school in Cambodia because of scholarships. Both had one week of English lessons at Khaodang, a Thai refugee camp Tsing mentions in her book, prior to migrating to the US. Because they were literate in Khmer and familiar with French schooling, both completed technical degrees and found more secure employment unlike many of their friends who were barely literate in Khmer. Nonetheless because I grew up around their friends and their children who are like my cousins, we always received gifts of food. Last month we received bags of dried shrimp their friends caught and dried chili peppers. My parents also grow their food which used to embarrass me. When I moved into on-campus family housing here at UCR, my mom rushed over to plant a garden of lemongrass, chili peppers, mint, jack fruit, papaya, sugar cane and green onions. I’ve since let some of it dry out. My dad pickles leafy greens for me and delivers coconuts. Tsing’s book made me reimagine these everyday occurrences embedded in small ecologies of communities across a continuum of time. Tsing populates the Oregon landscape with an array of interconnected stories despite and because of difference but also inflects my own experiences through life as “coordination through disturbance” (163). Tsing’s description of the Khmer woman who finds picking mushrooms a form of healing (89) made me think about how my parents also find “freedom” in growing their own food. For this week, I selected an eleven minute video about how some Cambodian seniors in Long Beach who garden and grow food.  

Tsing’s descriptions of the autumn matsutake also remind of the seasonal food and festivals in my town in Japan. People gathered for imono or autumn barbeques to grill an assortment of squash, small green pumpkins and mushrooms. Winter for me was bowls of ramen noodles after weekends in the mountains. In spring, some part-time retired coworkers picked sansai or mountain greens fry them lightly in tempura batter to maintain the flavors. Cherry blossom season in full bloom in some parts of Japan right now so for this week I included pictures of cherry blossoms in a park near my old apartment.

The city lit up the park for these blossom viewing parties and various friends hosted parties. My English club students collected money to purchase chips, chocolate and drinks for our after school cherry blossom parties. Graduations take place in the spring and teachers are shuffled to new schools as the fiscal year for public schools begins and ends in spring. The lamppost in the picture above reads “cherry blossom festival” with the sponsor’s name written on the side “Kaisei Dining” a nearby restaurant. While life in Japan was a bit too controlled for my tastes, the safety allowed activities like attending a Friday evening office party, then check in to see who was performing at a small hip hop club that felt like someone’s garage and finally stroll home at 4 or 5am. This is a picture from one of those weekend morning walks home in spring. After reading Tsing’s book, I decided to open my suitcase of kimonos and yukatas gifted from a friend’s mom and her senior citizen group and the gifts still smell of my life in Japan. I'm not sure if the smells are imagined but they definitely bring back certain feelings and memories.