Even if coffee is atrocious, it's helped me find a seat at the table

This First Person article is the experience of Alyx Bui, an emerging filmmaker in Edmonton. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I was eight years old in my childhood kitchen and my father was making his usual: a black Vietnamese drip coffee from a metallic phin on top of a tall, clear glass.

A phin is a Vietnamese crossover between a French press and a pour over and looks like a miniature tin steamer. Every morning, it was fascinating to watch the slow and steady dark drips coming from the bottom of the phin. 

After the phin was done filtering, he then took a generous amount of sticky condensed milk in a spoon and mixed it with his black coffee, swirling the contents until it was a soft and cosy light brown coffee.

But it's the SMELL that was the peak of this coffee experience. Filling the entire house, it was light, aromatic and pleasantly sweet. It's a smell that transports me to the simpler times as my family sat around in communal circles, woke up with the sun and started our mornings with a lazy gait and conversation.

One morning, right before he could carefully mix in the condensed milk, he was called away to the stove to help out my mom. As a young and curious child, I greedily reached for the glass and quickly took a generous sip. I first savoured the beautiful rich, saccharine aroma of the Vietnamese coffee and let the coffee run through my tongue and slide down my throat.   

And it was absolutely disgusting. Horrible. Appalling. It tasted like fermented dirt. I can't remember if I spat it out or knocked over the glass in my bitter disappointment, but I remember when my father came back, he was very, very upset with me for some reason. 

And to this day, I still find coffee absolutely revolting. It tastes like bitter socks. And if in the strange, rare and desperate times I do need to drink it, I drown the concoction in so much sugar that I'm pretty sure my blood sugar levels are screaming with the spike. Like my friend said when I tried Indonesian kopi luwak — civet coffee, in which the beans have been digested and fermented by the small mammal — that's really a waste.

But you know the really funny thing? Coffee has helped me find a seat at the table. Coffee has helped me find community, especially within the queer community. I can tell you that I really do like coffee. Maybe not for its taste, but for its ability to bring people together. 

Coffee shop congregations

I have been in many coffee shops to go on queer dates, share stories, organize and rally with other queer folx. I even filmed a documentary on a queer, BIPOC-led coffee shop.

While filming my coffee documentary, I had so many tough conversations and learnings over hot beverages and in coffee shops.

Learnings like the history of coffee being steeped in a long history of colonialism, food insecurity, exploitation and environmental degradation.

Questions like, why don't we hear about the effects of climate change in relation to the mass migration of Black, Indigenous and brown peoples? Why are the countries in the Global South that grow coffee still impoverished? How can we create an equitable, sustainable and inclusive coffee industry? I am still extremely close to the crew that I filmed with, and to this day associate coffee with cultivating a sense of belonging and a warm presence. 

Coffee shops have historically been a place for many queer people to gather, including the infamous Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco, where a thrown cup of coffee in 1966 incited a protest against police brutality, three years before the Stonewall riots took place in New York City.

So even if coffee is atrocious, foul and bitterly tastes like my unrealized dreams, I don't want to wipe it off the face of the Earth. I don't want to knock it out of people's hands. I want more coffee. More opportunities for people to gather. For queer, BIPOC folx. Especially in Edmonton.

Back to the table 

The morning after I got in trouble with my father for spilling his coffee, he invited me to the table again. There was his classic tall crystal glass, filled to the brim with the warm, caramel coffee and swirls of rich condensed milk. But, this time beside his coffee glass, there was a small, silver teapot and another tall, yet empty, crystal glass. Pushing my nose to the metal lid, I could smell … looseleaf tea, deliciously brewing.

I then pushed my nose to his crystal glass and deeply inhaled the sweet scent of Vietnamese coffee. He grunted and waved me toward the tall, empty glass. And that's how my early childhood mornings were then spent, drinking tea beside my dad, while he was drinking his coffee. 

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