Writers Who Eat: T Kira Mahealani Madden in Conversation with Bix Gabriel

Food, writing, they’re both offerings of building community and communication.

It shouldn’t have surprised me when writer T Kira Mahealani Madden confessed to loving tedium. Sentences in her memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, are precise as X-Acto blades. That kind of precision requires an intimate understanding of tedium, a devotion, so to speak, to detail. Which is to say: it requires care.

I don’t know if T Kira spends hours, days, sifting through her prose, meticulously excising anything that is bland, or rote; we didn’t discuss her writing process. But the extent of her care is evident even when she talks about soup, her resentment of cooking, and flopped Swedish meatballs. It made me think of how, despite being deeply concerned about the outcome, I am careless in my execution, often rushing through a recipe or an essay. Surprisingly, this realization didn’t send me down my usual path of self-recrimination. Instead, it released me: T Kira’s methodology suggests that caring is a choice, and with choices come possibilities—to learn a new recipe, to invent one, to find my way through the writing, step by careful step.

Bix Gabriel: I’ve been re-reading your memoir, and I noticed that you write about making soup a lot as a kid. (Laughter.) And I’m wondering if you still like making soup.

T Kira Madden: I do! I make soup, usually, at least once a week. I make a lot of soup. It’s my favorite food, my favorite thing to cook; don’t ask me if I have a favorite because I don’t. (Laughs.) Soup is incredible because I love—as any of my friends will say—I love tedium. Tell me anything in excruciating detail, all the steps, every step, and the many reasons why something interacts with something else. It’s how I’ve lulled myself out of anxiety or panic attacks. It’s how I’ve managed depression. In the old days, if I would get too drunk, I would ask my wife, my then girlfriend, “Can you tell me the many steps of medicating a horse for this reason?” Or something [like that] and she would talk, and it would soothe me down. Steps calm me. I think this is true for many people, why many of us watch YouTube videos, perhaps. That’s where recipes come in for me. And soup, of all things—at least the soups I like to make—require careful thought and order. I love understanding that order of flavor development, understanding why something should be salted or roasted first, why something else could fall apart. It’s a step-by-step thing, with this gorgeous result at the end, and you can taste those many layers and flavors. And it’s nourishing, warm . . . I don’t fuck with cold soups.

BG: No . . . borscht, ugh.

Soup is incredible because I love—as any of my friends will say—I love tedium.

TKM: (Laughs.) My brother, Blake, also loves soup. We grew up eating canned Campbell’s—we weren’t cooking at that time; I’m talking maybe six years old. Blake would say: “Labels are for soup cans, dude,” and that became a catchphrase, our thing. Then he started another saying: Soup is love. And our goal has been—post-pandemic when we see each other again—to finally get “Soup is Love” tattoos. He was the soup king first—he’s older than me—and he recently started a mutual aid organization in Seattle called Soup is Love, where he feeds the houseless and hungry soup every day.

BG: That’s amazing! It seems like at least the two of you cook. And your mom?

TKM: My mom went to culinary school—she loves to cook. I think it’s so romantic and beautiful when people have stories about growing up cooking with their mom or with their grandparents. But the truth is: when I was young I had my canned soups. I had two parents struggling with substance abuse, and that was food that I could make for myself—those cans of Campbell’s. I have my attachment to them. And later, I really resented cooking. Even when my mom went to culinary school, and I went to her demos to taste the things she was cooking, and oh, the food was so good!—I still oddly resented it. Why go through all of this just to eat? I didn’t understand.

Something that resonates now, as an adult, is that when my mom got sober, one of the first things she did was begin culinary classes. I asked her why. Why treatment, sobriety, cooking? And she said, “because it’s a way for me to accept mistakes and accidents.” I’ve never forgotten that. I didn’t understand how profound that was at the time, or how much I’d need it later.

It wasn’t until grad school—I went on a trip with some friends for a writing retreat; we arrived at this place in the middle of the night—maybe because our flights were delayed. We were so hungry, and there were only a couple of things in the kitchen—there was a tomato or two, some sugar, some canned, random things, and no one knew what to do with them. And I put together this pasta dish out of all these things, and it’s my first memory of actually cooking with critical thinking, and I realized that night: all the things my mom had been doing in the kitchen, all the lessons, the things she’d been saying for years, I had absorbed it. I’d just never tried [to cook]. I think I was afraid of failure or of the patience it would take to do a good job.

BG: And how ironic that it was feeding a bunch of writers, food and writing, and . . . here we are.

TKM: Yeah!

BG: Everything that I’ve seen on Instagram that you’ve made looks amazing.

TKM: Thank you. There are still some flops.

BG: Tell me about the flops! I love hearing about flops!

TKM: I love flops. I’ve flopped so deeply on Swedish meatballs—

BG: Why? Are they particularly hard to make?

TKM: I don’t think so! No! I’m lactose intolerant because, hi! I’m Asian and Jewish. And I tried to make Swedish meatballs with dairy replacements. It was when I was first experimenting with how to eat with lactose intolerance. I think I tried cashew or coconut milk to build this cream sauce, and I was adding acid, and it curdled. Also, somehow, the meat was bad. It wasn’t even cooked all the way through. And the whole thing was this clumpy, sweet, rotten-smelling thing, where even Hannah—who does not waste food as a guiding principle of her life—was like, this is inedible, we can’t eat this.

I’ve tried a couple more times and I’ve always failed. Because the anxiety at this point that I can’t make Swedish meatballs is too much! So yeah, I’ve had some flops. But I don’t feel upset about it because they’re never a little bad, they’re so bad, comically bad.

BG: When you were talking, I was thinking the same thing, it’s not like, “Oh, you know, I forgot salt . . .”

Laughter.

BG: There’s kind of great freedom in it though, I mean to me, it sounds like, if you’re gonna fuck it up, let’s just go—

TKM: Let’s go! Let’s go iconically bad. So bad I take pictures of it, and send it to my friends, and talk about how bad it is. Honor the bad things, too.

BG: That’s kind of amazing. I think we don’t celebrate our mistakes enough—

TKM: I’ll be in any basic Q&A and someone will ask me about my book, and I’ll be like, “Can I tell you about the five books that weren’t published, and why they were so terrible?” (Laughter.)

Maybe I pathologize failure but often, in the age of social media, you only hear about what works, what’s good, what sells, and everyone looks great, and everyone’s publishing everything, but it’s like—I just published a story yesterday, but it’s my first published story in years, and there’ve been so many rejections in between, but you only see the one.

BG: I’m reminded of what you said about your mom going to culinary school.

TKM: Uh-huh, I guess full circle. Damn.

BG: I’m hearing how much you now love cooking, and I’m wondering if you get questions about cooking that are specific to being a woman or being a woman of color?

TKM: People have an idea of Chinese food, but people here know very little about Hawaiian food, Island food; I wish they asked more, to be honest. I don’t see a wide understanding of the flavor profiles and history of the Pacific and its dishes.

BG: What’s something you enjoy that is more traditional to Hawaiian cuisine?

TKM: Mix plate! Kalua pig, long rice noodles, and poké, of course. It’s what I make most often—and the gorgeous thing about Hawaiian cuisine, is it so often combines the ingredients and cuisines of those who worked the island farms and plantations pre and post Western contact—Korean, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese—that’s how the mix plate was born.

BG: You’ve seen the poké craze, the poké popup shops?

TKM: That hurts me. It hurts me . . . deeply. As I know you understand, the bastardization of something that is so amazing, so special, becoming these commercial chains of . . . it’s not poké. It’s the colonial gaze—one of the many. Mainland chains pronounce it pokey, like the hokey pokey song. There’s no understanding of what it is, where it’s from—it’s the cut that makes it poké; it doesn’t have to be tuna. And it certainly doesn’t come on a fancy plate or with zucchini noodles.

It’s the colonial gaze—one of the many.

BG: Do you have a particular recipe, something you like to cook? Or steps, a methodology?

TKM: The art of good fried rice! Versatile, delicious. Once you figure it out, it’s so easy; it’s great for cleaning out the fridge, a fantastic way to use leftovers.

BG: I’m curious as with anybody who cooks and writes, if there’s any connection you experience, you see, between writing and cooking?

TKM: For me, it comes down to mistakes again, the tedious process. And . . . I don’t know if this is taking a very negative spin on the question, but I think writing and cooking are often misunderstood and reduced in similar ways.

As someone who wrote a memoir, I challenge the idea that it’s just bleeding into the typewriter, or whatever Hemingway maybe said, just spewing thoughts and ideas, like a diary, and publishing it.

On the one hand, there is a soulful, spiritual element to what it is we’re doing, in writing and cooking, but on the other, it’s incredible how much is going on, technically; the thought, procedure, understanding of cause and effect, and science—in cooking. And in writing, it’s the same—it’s the craftsmanship; it’s profound how much work goes into putting a piece together which can so often be missed by those who don’t take the time to ask questions, to appreciate [it] more deeply. So I often feel as if I’m competing with this romantic idea of what both mean, and while there is romance to it, there’s also so much more behind the scenes, behind the dish, or story, for the person making it.

Food, writing, they’re both offerings of building community and communication. Some people ask, “Oh, did you just write that just for you?” No. Personally, I’m writing for other people, to communicate with other people, to open a dialogue, a conversation. And when I feed people, it’s the same, I want to start a conversation, I want to show you I care; I love when people ask questions about food. When someone asks, what’s in this? Why this dish? Where’s this ingredient from? Where did you learn this? I love that. And I love the same questions about writing and about art.

Does that mean we can’t just sit back and enjoy it? No. But we might enjoy the world more if we take the time to learn about it.

Below you can listen to an excerpt from Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir 

CW for domestic violence

T Kira Mahealani Madden’s Fried Rice Methodology

• Always leftover rice, that’s really important. People miss that part. If you use fresh rice, it’s going to be a ball of mush!

• I like white rice, but you can use any kind of rice. Hapa rice is half white and half brown rice combined, that’s a Hawaiian thing—I’m hapa haole, someone half-white, half-native.

• You don’t need a wok. I use a wok, but you don’t need one.

• I love a rice with eggs. I love a rice with protein, shrimp, or fish, or tofu, whatever you like. I had a can of crab meat that I used for a fried rice this weekend. Of course, you don’t have to use any of these things, depending on your dietary restrictions.

• Shoyu—how Hawaiians say soy sauce—is a must.

• If you like spice, you can use it—there are so many! Sambal, sriracha, chili paste, chili crisp, red pepper flakes . . .

• I love fresh herbs in everything, all the time, so I use basil or cilantro if I’m making fried rice. Ideally both.

• Scallions.

• I love sesame seeds, for crunch.

• The most important thing—people don’t often do this—add sugar. You should balance the salt and sugar, as you’re making it, in equal measure. You’ll get a lot of salt from the shoyu, so be careful with that. I take light palmfuls of white sugar and I throw it in.

• I love lime juice in fried rice.

• I love chopped onions in my fried rice —I know a lot of people like bell peppers, some people like broccoli—use whatever leftover veggies you have.

• Usually, I’ll put some vegetable oil in the wok, get it super hot. Then I’ll throw the protein in, depending on what it is—I’ll cook down meat, or, if I’m using seafood, I’ll wait until later so it doesn’t overcook. If I’m using canned food or leftovers, I only need to warm that up. Use your best judgment here.

• Then I’ll add the rice, get it frying, add the shoyu, maybe some sesame oil. I’ll add my vegetables, ingredients, whatever I want. It’s really hard to mess up, honestly!

• The key to fried rice is moving things, and separating them so they have time to cook on their own. When you’re adding garlic or ginger, you make a well, add oil, and let it sizzle in its little well.

• So that’s the fried rice game to me: Add rice, and I’ll put it to the side over here, and I’ll put some vegetables over there, and I’ll grate some ginger or garlic, and that will sizzle elsewhere. Always sprinkling shoyu, always adding sugar and salt as I go, mixing it all together. Then you’re going to make space, add some oil, and crack the eggs right into the pan. I let it set a little bit, and then I mix it in.

• I like crispy parts, so I let it sit and burn a little bit. You don’t have to do that, but maybe you should.