Your House Will Pay

Your House Will Pay includes detailed descriptions of both Grace and Shawn’s meals. The choice of food carries meaning between the characters. Shawn orders a Domino’s pizza for Ray’s release from prison despite there already being enough food, as a nod to their favorite meal as teenagers. Yvonne cooks seaweed soup to commemorate Miriam’s birthday despite their two-year estrangement. Both families treat meals as sacred events which keep the family together or emphasize the absence of certain members—such as Ray or Miriam. Food thus can symbolize the obligation one has to their family or community.

Food serves as a symbol for specific racial communities and is thus a way to perform one’s belonging to a community. Cha describes a variety of Korean dishes from the Hanin Market food court and those cooked by Yvonne. Miriam “fails” to be Korean because she can only cook spaghetti, yet retains Korean-ness by buying kimchi from a Korean store. Dasha wants to participate in traditional Black Los Angeles culture by having family dinner at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles—even as Shawn considers the place to have lost its communal significance due to the influx of white customers.