¶ Front-page news: “Korean Grocers Are Dwindling.”. Few things could be more foreseeable, even if we hadn’t read Ben Ryder Howe’s My Korean Deli, in which a lawyer sets her mother up with a corner store so that she’ll have something to do. If that’s what running a Korean fruit stand has come to — but of course that’s exactly what they were supposed to come to. These operations, which required little background skill but endless attentiveness, were intended to serve as booster-stage engines that would rocket families out of poverty and into the American middle (or upper-middle!) class.

Instead of taking over the businesses when their parents retire, as some Italian- and Jewish-Americans did generations ago, the children of Koreans are finding work far from the checkout counter, in law firms, banks and hospitals. And parents insist on that, Mr. Lee said.

As success stories go, this one is slightly bittersweet; our beloved Green Village turned into a 7-11 years ago. Now, when is that goshdarned Fairway going to open up across the street?

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2011 at 8:00 pm.