The mom-and-pop doughnut shops that dot California's strip malls carry principally the identical mouth-watering doughy delights. However past the rows of glazed, chocolate and sprinkles lies a distinct type of richness, within the tales of the Individuals behind the counter.
Roughly 80% of doughnut outlets in southern California – that is properly over a thousand – are owned by Cambodian refugee households. They arrived in America within the late Nineteen Seventies and early '80s in search of security because the Communist Khmer Rouge dedicated genocide in Cambodia's killing fields. Hundreds of thousands have been executed or disappeared.
Many who escaped settled in California, and located work in doughnut outlets.
"We immigrated proper after the genocide," mentioned Teresa Ngo, who owns Blinkie's Donuts in Woodland Hills. Her household has owned doughnut shops for the reason that Nineteen Eighties. "Initially, when you get right here, you do not converse the language, and you've got household that gives you a job. And subsequent factor , they have been doing it for his or her complete life, and generally a number of generations at a time."
Erin Curtis, an L.A. historian with the Lucas Museum of Narrative Artwork in Los Angeles, mentioned that refugees weren't provided many sources, and had to determine how they might assist one another. "California has had an extended historical past of doughnut tradition," she mentioned. "And it is change into much more well-known, I'd argue, within the final 40 years or so, and that is actually resulting from Cambodian refugees who type of got here in and expanded the doughnut tradition right here in Southern California very tremendously."
Correspondent Elaine Quijano requested, "It is truthful to say it is a part of American tradition then?"
"Yeah, completely."
A tradition which now contains the pink doughnut field. Many years in the past, Cambodian retailer homeowners bypassed costly white packing containers for cheaper pink packing containers, which match a dozen doughnuts completely. The transfer not solely saved hundreds of dollars; it additionally created an icon of sweetness.
"I in all probability realized fold a pink doughnut field earlier than I realized my ABCs," mentioned Dorothy Chow, who at the moment manages a doughnut provide firm. The daughter of Cambodian refugees, she grew up working in a number of of her dad and mom' shops, and considers herself a "doughnut child."
"There have been some days that I labored perhaps 12-, 13-, 14-hour days," mentioned Chow. "However then, now as I am older, I can look again at it with satisfaction. Like, I'm part of one thing greater. I'm a part of this complete journey that our dad and mom have been on. They got here right here with nothing. They wanted all the assistance that they might with the doughnut store. And we have been there to assist and assist them each time we will."
A narrative which is now being unboxed. Phung Hyunh is a Cambodian-American artist who got here to America as a refugee. In her exhibit, "Doughnut (W)gap," at Self Assist Graphics & Artwork in Los Angeles, she makes use of a pink doughnut field as a substitute of a white canvas to seize a style of the Cambodian-American refugee expertise.
"That widespread shared expertise of the doughnut could be very American," she mentioned. "Beneath the candy of the doughnut is definitely inter-generational trauma and ache."
Hyunh's artwork focuses largely on the second technology. She juxtaposes childhood pictures of "doughnut children" with the portraits of the adults they've change into. "It is solely this technology born in the USA to inform their dad and mom, 'Look, we wanna honor you. You by no means had the time to even take into consideration what you have been by way of. And we wish to take this time to honor your story as a result of you did not have the time to write down about it,'" Hyunh mentioned.
One in every of her portraits: Dorothy Chow.
When requested to described seeing her portrait on a pink doughnut field, Chow replied, "I had a way of satisfaction. I believe perhaps for the primary time I felt like rising up in America and perhaps making sacrifices I did as a baby was lastly being seen."
Now, as an grownup, Chow herself sees issues in a different way – just like the pink packing containers she as soon as folded as slightly lady. "These doughnut packing containers are an instance of resilience and a illustration of the refugee expertise right here in America," she mentioned.
For more information:
- Blinkie's Donuts, Woodland Hills, Calif.
- Artist Phung Hyunh
- Exhibition: "Doughnut (W)gap" by Phung Huynh, at Self Assist Graphics & Artwork, Los Angeles (by way of Might 27)
- B&H Bakery Distributors, Hayward, Calif.
- Lucas Museum of Narrative Artwork, Los Angeles
Story produced by Sharaf Mowjood. Editor: Remington Korper.