Korean culture and memories of her mother

Korean culture and memories of her mother are intertwined in the Covey sisters’ family life, where food, travel, and shared recollection keep heritage connected to love and loss. As the sisters prepare for a month in Korea, their arguments over what belongs in family life reveal that remembering their mother is not separate from deciding how their culture will continue to matter.

Food, Family, and Cultural Continuity

Korean food is more than a preference at the Covey dinner table. Margot calls it the family’s “biggest link to Korean culture” and worries aloud that if Trina dislikes it, the family might stop eating it. Her concern is not simply about a particular meal: she fears that cultural practice could recede as the household changes and Trina becomes part of it. Margot insists that marrying their father means receiving the whole family, with Korea included in that inheritance.

Lara Jean answers by pointing to the sisters’ upcoming summer in Korea, where they will be able to eat Korean food every day. Her reassurance carries an unspoken cost: those same days will be spent away from Peter. The cultural trip thus becomes both a promise of closeness to family history and a step into separation from her present relationship. Kitty wishes that their father and Trina could come too, while Margot half-jokes that Trina might not know what to eat there. The sisters’ exchange makes belonging feel practical and unsettled: it is negotiated through who shares a meal, who travels, and who is imagined as part of the family’s cultural “package.”

Heritage Beyond a Single Definition

The novel also distinguishes cultural connection from simply adopting a visible custom. While discussing a wedding idea inspired by a movie, Peter wonders whether it is an Asian tradition. Kitty corrects him: it is Thai, not Korean. Margot then argues that Trina should not incorporate Asian culture into her wedding merely because the Covey sisters are Asian. The conversation rejects the idea that a broad racial label makes different traditions interchangeable, or that a family member must perform an inherited identity to prove respect for it.

Lara Jean’s thoughts about possible work in Colonial Williamsburg expose another pressure: she wonders whether historical accuracy might mean that Asian people are not hired to portray the past. Margot counters with the example of Phillipa Soo playing Eliza Hamilton and tells Lara Jean that, if the site refuses to hire her, they will publicize it. Together, the exchange and Lara Jean’s worry show how cultural identity is shaped not only at home but also by who is permitted to appear in public versions of history. The sisters can claim a connection to Korea without being reduced to a single expected role.

Memory Carried Through Everyday Life

Lara Jean’s memories of her mother are often small, physical scenes rather than a formal account of the past. After baths, her mother combed the tangles from her hair as Lara Jean sat cross-legged watching television. When Margot went to piano lessons, mother and daughter sometimes shared secret McDonald’s ice-cream sundaes in the parking lot: caramel and strawberry sauce, with her mother giving her the peanuts because Lara Jean loved them. The memories linger as a soft, blended feeling of being loved. They make the maternal bond present through ordinary care and shared tastes, not through grand gestures.

That intimacy gives the family’s connection to Korea emotional weight. When Margot becomes upset over the possibility that Korean food might disappear from their routine, Lara Jean recognizes the fear beneath the argument: Margot worries that losing the food would mean losing their connection to Korea and, through Korea, forgetting their mother. She reassures Margot that neither Korea nor their mother will be forgotten. The assurance does not depend on preserving every custom unchanged; it rests on the sisters’ shared knowledge that memory and belonging survive family adjustments.

Learning, Travel, and Shared Inheritance

The planned July trip gives that inheritance a concrete form. The sisters are to stay with a great-aunt in Seoul, attend Korean-language classes several times a week, and tour the country, including Jeju and Busan. Lara Jean is promised a Korean pastry-making class conducted in English, a particular pleasure because she has long wanted to learn how to make Korean cream cakes. Kitty dances at the news; Margot imagines shopping together and eventually watching Korean dramas without subtitles. Their excitement gathers language, food, travel, and sisterly time into one shared future.

The trip is not presented as a cure for grief or a final answer to what cultural belonging requires. Instead, it gives the sisters new ways to encounter a heritage they already carry through family meals and memories. Learning Korean and making pastries extend that connection into practices they can choose and share, while the promise to remember their mother keeps the journey tied to the family’s past. Heritage here is neither simply inherited nor left behind: it is made durable through everyday acts of attention, and remade as the family changes.