Wah - Diamond Grill

Fred Wahs Diamond Grill is a small gem of a book... from unpunctuated prose poems, recipes, and excerpts from research materials, to beautifully detailed descriptions of the restaurant itself, funny and warm character sketches, and philosophical musings upon anthropology and identity.

Quill & Quire

... a sophisticated and moving text... Wah has produced a memorable account...

Canadian Literature

This collection has been written with delicate precision, and Fred Wah, who takes great care in reproducing his family histories and mixedrace heritage, delicious foods, seasons, and community life, makes the Diamond Grill come alive.

Pacific Reader

Intimate, moving, funny...

Calgary Herald

... Fred Wahs Diamond Grill serves up a tasty literary entreas well as providing an entrance to a world about which we need to know if were to understand ourselves.

The Vancouver Sun

What a joy it is to read his beautifully written sentences, filled to bursting with well chosen language.

Ruth Raymond

SELECTED WORKS BY FRED WAH

Faking It: Poetics and Hybridity. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2000.

Alley Alley Home Free. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press, 1992.

So Far. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991.

Music at the Heart of Thinking. Red Deer:
Red Deer College Press, 1987.

Waiting for Saskatchewan. Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 1985.

Grasp The Sparrows Tail. Kyoto, 1982.

Breathin My Name With a Sigh. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1981.

Owners Manual. Lantzville: Island Writing Series, 1981.

Loki is Buried at Smoky Creek: Selected Poetry. Vancouver:
Talonbooks, 1980.

Pictograms from the Interior of B.C. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1975.

Earth. Canton, N.Y.: Institute of Further Studies, 1974.

Tree. Vancouver: Vancouver Community Press, 1972.

Among. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1972.

Lardeau. Toronto: Island Press, 1965.

Copyright Fred Wah 2006

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wah, Fred, 1939
Diamond Grill / Fred Wah. -- New ed.

(Landmark edition)

First published: 1996.

ISBN-13: 978-1-897126-11-0
ISBN-10: 1-897126-11-5

I. Title. II. Series.
PS8545.A28D52 2006 C813.54 C2006-903399-4

Board editor: Doug Barbour
Cover and interior design: Val Speidel
Cover photograph: courtesy Fred Wah
Author photograph: Don Denton

NeWest Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

NeWest Press
2018540109 Street
Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6

(780) 432-9427

www.newestpress.com

2 3 4 5 09 08
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

CONTENTS

long green vinyl aisle between booths of chrome, Naugahyde, and Formica, are two large swinging wooden doors, each with a round hatch of face-sized window. Those kitchen doors can be kicked with such a slap theyre heard all the way up to the soda fountain. On the other side of the doors, hardly audible to the customers, echoes a jargon of curses, jokes, and cryptic orders. Stack a hots! Half a dozen fry! Hot beef san! Fingers and tongues all over the place jibe and swear You mucka high!Thloong you! And outside, running through and around the town, the creeks flow down to the lake with, maybe, a spring thaw. And the prairie sun over the mountains to the east, over my familys shoulders. The journal journey tilts tight-fisted through the gutter of the book, avoiding a place to startor end. Maps dont have beginnings, just edges. Some frayed and hazy margin of possibility, absence, gap. Shouts in the kitchen. Fish an! Side a fries! Over easy! On brown! I pick up an order and turn, back through the doors, whap! My foot registers more than its own imprint, starts to read the stain of memory.

Thus: a kind of heterocellular recovery reverberates through the busy body, from the foot against that kitchen door on up the leg into the torso and hands, eyes thinking straight ahead, looking through doors and languages, skin recalling its own reconnaissance, cooked into the steamy food, replayed in the folds of elsewhere, always far away, tunneling through the centre of the earth, mouth saying cant forget, mouth saying what I want to know can feed me, what I dont can bleed me.

and, as in most Chinese-Canadian restaurants in western Canada, is your typical improvised imitation of Empire cuisine. No kippers or kidney for the Chinese cafe cooks, though. They know the authentic mixed grill alright. It is part of their colonial cooks training, learning to serve the superior race in Hong Kong and Victoria properly, mostly as chefs in private elite clubs and homes. But, as the original lamb chop, split lamb kidney, and pork sausage edges its way onto every small town cafe menu, its ruddy countenance has mutated into something quick and dirty, not grilled at all, but fried.

Shu composes his mixed grill on top of the stove. He throws on a veal chop, a rib-eye, a couple of pork sausages, bacon, and maybe a little piece of liver or a few breaded sweetbreads if he has those left over from the special. While the meats sizzling he adds a handful of sliced mushrooms and a few slices of tomato to saut alongside. He shovels it all, including the browned grease, onto the large oblong platters used only for this dish and steak dinners, wraps the bacon around the sausages, nudges on a scoop of mashed potatoes, a ladle of mixed steamed (actually canned and boiled) vegetables, a stick of celery, and sometimes a couple of flowered radishes. As he lifts the finished dish onto the pickup counter he wraps the corner of his apron around his thumb and wipes the edge of the platter clean, pushes a button that rings a small chime out front, and shouts loudly into the din of the kitchen, whether theres anyone there or not, mixee grill!

on Baker Street is what he hears first. Then Coreens deep breathing. Warmth. Shut off the alarm, quick, before she wakes up. Four forty-five, still dark, the house chilled. Dream-knot to Asia, dark and umbilical, early morning on the Pearl Delta, light the grass fire under the rice, ginger taste, garlic residue dampened. Here, on the other side of the world (through that tunnel all the way to China), in long-johns and slippers, quietly to the basement to stoke the furnace with a couple shovelfuls of coal and then wash up. Shave. He talks silently to himself (in English?) as he moves through the routine in near darkness: Who gave me this Old Spice last Christmas? One of the girls at work? Think Ill wear that rayon shirt today. Wheres that pack of Players? My pen in the shirt pocket. Light brown gabardines. Start the day with less than a bucks worth of change in the right pocket. Clean hanky in the back pocket. The heavy Health Spot shoes the kids shined last night, by the kitchen door. Overcoat. Overshoes. Out the door into the morning that is still night.