This issue of Kiosk is devoted to two of everyone’s great topics: families and food. In fact, some of the stories, like Sarah Vaughn’s “My Father’s Keeper,” combine food writing and personal essay to paint a family portrait in meals shared and recipes remembered.
On the menu are Jillian Tempesta’s tale from the gourmet food truck renaissance in “The Lime Light" and Alexis Hodoyan-Gastelum’s story of the rebirth of food culture in Tijuana in “Life After Terror." Cleo Tobbi takes us into an innovative offshoot of the food-blogging universe – a very successful YouTube channel devoted to plumbing the depths of bad tastes. Her story “We Tried It at Home” profiles a brave man who makes his living from eating (and often seeing again after eating) some of the world’s most repugnant dishes. A veritable connoisseur of disgust, he contests the boundaries of the edible and the inedible.
The family stories here range from Sahar Jahani’s tale of an inadvertently transnational childhood, “The Patriots," to Emily Villanueva’s wise and nuanced eulogy to a lost father, “Airport Reunions.” Also in the mix we have included “Like Mother, Like Son,” a personal essay by Roshan Khan which explores the possibilities of the inheritance of love, identity, and trauma.
In all, this issue treats the two topics that are--for most readers--closest to home.
New in this issue of Kiosk is a feature that reflects our broadening focus on multimedia reporting: a special section on photo essays titled “Southern California Stories." Each collection of images is a small slice of Southern California life. Continuing the food theme, Josh Waldrop visits Garden Grove to report on their celebrated annual StrawberryFestival, and Rayna Jensen captures luscious images of the catches of the day at Newport Beach’s historic Dory Fleet Fishmarket, which itself was profiled in last year’s issue by Charisma Madarang. You loved the story, now see the photos! Anna Iliff takes us to a backyard baptism, and Victoria Yu observes Memorial Day at Forest Lawn in a ceremony replete with an Abraham Lincoln double, Civil War reeneactors, and Scottish bagpipers. Finally, we go behind the scenes at UC Irvine with Anne Carr’s backstage shots of the university's renowned dance program and Ian Massey’s editor’s-eye views of the making of the campus newspaper’s recent physique special edition.
In this issue, we offer stories both to savor and to love. Enjoy!
-- Patricia Pierson
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