'There Will Be Lumpia:' What Mom's Food Says About Love and Family (Exclusive)

'Bite By Bite' author Aimee Nezhukumatathil reflects on how her mother showed love through food in an exclusive excerpt from her new book

So often, the first and most powerful memories we have of our parents and families of origin center around food. The flavors of our childhood can contextualize who we are and where we came from, and who we want to become.

In her new book, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil interrogates the way food and drink intertwines with our human experiences and identities and explores the often murky boundaries between heritage and memory. Below, in an exclusive excerpt for PEOPLE, she reflects on how a teenage slumber party taught her to appreciate an important food from her Filipino culture.

On my 14th birthday, I didn't even want to have lumpia on the table. My parents said I could have a sleepover and pizza, and we had access to 80s cable television, which meant movies like The Legend of Billie Jean or The Lost Boys or The Goonies playing on HBO.

This was a big deal—it was huge, in fact. My immigrant parents were never fond of my spending the night at other people's houses, and I can imagine them wanting to protect my younger sister and me from all the dreadful shenanigans they had witnessed on sitcoms and movies of the time: Prank calls! Sneaking out to meet boys! Piercing ears with a needle! Smoking and drinking! 

This is not an essay that stays small and embarrassed. 

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Even if I never got a single present on this birthday, I already felt so lucky: both parents were off from work; neither was even on call (which usually meant leaving before cake and presents and not coming home till the wee hours of the morning after racing back to the hospital for a patient emergency). My sister and I still had rooms right next door to each other. I loved that, sharing a wall we could tap-tap-tap in our own sister Morse code, instead of saying goodnight out loud and waking our parents. There was nothing more I could ask for. 

This is not an essay that is ashamed. 

One of the reasons this slumber party at our house was special and unconventional was because we lived on the psychiatric hospital grounds, right next to the patients' baseball stadium. My parents couldn't believe my friends' parents let their kids spend the night. But as my friend put it: Aimee, my parents said it's the safest place in town! There's security cars and cameras all over the place! 

The other reason this was going to be a big deal was that there was going to be pizza. Capozzi's Pizzeria pizza, to be exact—the best in town, with its signature thick and spicy pepperonis, scattered and almost burnt every time. Every teen in town loved that pizza. 

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What I didn't know is that my mom had rolled three dozen lumpia the night before. Lumpia is a deep-fried finger food in the Philippines, made of a filling of chicken or ground beef, carrots and green beans, and my mom puts raisins in for a hint of sweetness. The filling is wrapped and folded into a small roll, a little thicker than my thumb, and these rolls are fried to a golden crisp and usually served with a sweet chili sauce for dipping. Even though I loved this party food so much, I told her no, we didn't need lumpia at a party. Pizza and cake and chips and two liters of pop was all we needed. 

A party without lumpia! was her astonished reply. No. We don't do that. No. There will be lumpia!

The thing is, for me, lumpia has always been synonymous with gatherings, with parties. I've always thought that, since before I could say a complete sentence, as there are pictures with me holding a single lumpia in my chubby fist, and I still think it even now. You know it's a true party when someone brings a tray of lumpia. 

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Once my friends started trickling in on that snowy December night, mom started up the frypan to heat the canola oil for frying. I remember taking my friends' coats and wanting to hide and stay there in the coat closet. None of my friends had lumpia for their birthday, and even though it remains one of my favorite finger foods, I just wanted it to be like everyone else's birthdays. I should have known the very fact that a 14-year-old was having a birthday sleepover at a mental asylum meant I'd never ever be like everyone else, so it would be pointless to pretend. 

This is a food essay that remembers merriment. 

Until I was in second grade, we lived in Chicago, and my parents' Filipino friends and neighbors gathered pretty regularly for potlucks. The kids would scamper down to shag-carpeted basements to dance and play. I remember running up furry stairs to get fuel-lumpia, one in each hand, then running back downstairs so I wouldn't miss the next plottings and stratagems of a game of tag or Ghost in the Graveyard. Songs like "You Could Do Magic," by the band America, or "You are the Woman," by Firefall, would be blasting, and soon the grown-ups would call us to come and dance in front of them. Woe to the Filipino child who did not want to dance, or worse, didn't like dancing at all. 

Those are some of the dearest moments of my childhood: the exquisite glee and butterflies in my tummy while performing some rudimentary choreographed routine with a lumpia in each hand, like tiny batons for that little girl. And when the song was over, applause would erupt from the edges of the party, and then I'd bite and crunch all the lumpia I could. Why did I somehow forget that elation, those dances, when I was 14? 

This is the apology of all apologies to my parents for ever being embarrassed of our food. My friends that did try something new—most of them for the first time—even finished theirs, some said, Great job, Dr. Paz! A couple of them wouldn't even try a bite, literally wrinkling their nose at the plateful my mom artfully stacked in a pretty pyramid. Instead of wanting to apologize that there was lumpia on the table of pizza and chips and dip, I thought of my mom taking the time off her busy schedule to tenderly cut each carrot and bean. 

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That was the last time I ever felt shame about my food. Because in watching people who I considered dear pals not even try something so lovingly made with my mother's hands, I gained pride instead. I think I had just one slice of pizza. The rest of my meal was all lumpia. 

Even now, when my mother hears we will be visiting her and my father in Florida, she will chop by hand all the ingredients for the lumpia filling, as she knows we are all hoping for a giant platter of them for at least one of our meals. Her grandsons love the crunch. Her son-in-law from Kansas loves the crunch. And most of all, her eldest daughter loves that crunch—it's the closest feeling to what it's like to have a room full of elders erupt into applause as you dance and twirl like you were six years old, one lumpia in each hand.

Adapted from Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Copyright © 2024 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil is on sale now, wherever books are sold.

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