Monks from the Hood.
Expanded exclusive except from SoupfromBones: A Self-Portrait of Stories and Recipes.
This is one of the most personal and layered stories I’ve ever written. It’s about family, tradition, grief, and the unexpected ways food ties us together—even in the middle of chaos. It’s a director’s cut of a moment that defined me as a Lao American storyteller and is featured in my book, SoupfromBones. If you have read this story in the book, give this another look, I am just getting better at this and have included some more details and notes I left out originally. For those of you new to my work—this story comes in a couple years after traveling around the world to cook and to learn my place in the world as a nomadic artist, writer, and aspiring chef.
I debated whether to release this publicly or try to get it published in a major outlet, but I realized I want you—my community—to read it first…enjoy :) -Johnny
The following story is inspired by true events. However, names, locations, timelines, and certain details have been changed for privacy and storytelling purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, beyond those explicitly referenced, is purely coincidental. This work represents the author’s personal recollections and interpretations.
Monks from the Hood [Stand-Alone Version]
by Johnny Chanthavong
"There’s no way I can pay you back, but the plan is to show you I understand. You are appreciated." – Tupac
On the last day of the funeral, all the men had to shave their heads and eyebrows and become monks for the day. They were happy about it, smiling—this was tradition, after all, and it was customary for all the men to do this. I decided not to. I figured one guy should be able to walk around freely to help the women in the family. Once they’re in monk mode, they can’t communicate or touch women, even family.
Turns out, that came in handy.
I was sitting in the funeral home. The casket was open, surrounded by flowers, pictures, and displays of all the families formed over the years. They did a very good job, and there was plenty of space for everyone to mourn. All of this began with Grandma, and all of it would continue long into the future with each of us.
Cousin Stone came over to me and said, "Make sure they play it right after everyone sits down…before the monks do the final chant."
"Got it."
Right before the monks chanted, there was a slideshow to play on the screen. It was made by the cousins, and one video made the 20-30-year-old grandchildren smile. In it, Grandma is taking shots with the cousins for her birthday. She was happy, they were singing and cheering her on, and I looked over at one of the aunts, very upset we included that in the slideshow. “How could you show her like that?!” Yet no one really cared. Everyone will have their thoughts, but for the kids, it was a special moment.
People took their seats, their eyes already swollen from days of trying not to cry. Then—the slideshow. Then something started to swell on the loudspeaker. Someone forgot to remove the audio from the PowerPoint. We all knew EXACTLY what song it was from the first note.
We could hear the faint notes, the piano starting to play the intro to Tupac’s “Dear Mama.” This was a no-no—the song was about to turn all the monks into a fit of tears. California and West Coast gangster rap at a funeral is very on-brand, but today, it was too much. The room froze. Even the flowers seemed to hold their breath.
Stone, An, Vincent, Cyrus, Uncle Bobby, Uncle Lasa—every man in my family, most of them former gang members, strong men who had seen and done a lot—were about to break down right then and there. And this was not allowed, not today, and not right now. For days, we were told not to cry in the house. No crying at Grandma’s house, keep it together at the funeral. This is because if you cry during the funeral, Grandma’s spirit cannot leave the space in peace.
And now, sitting in their seats with their bald heads and no eyebrows, they all turned to me. Their bald, no-eyebrowed faces told me without words, “Stop the music.” They knew I was the only one who could stop this. Ah, my shining moment—years of AV training, now it was my time! The one true Audio-Video Event Production Specialist in the family. DECADES OF EXPERIENCE!
I ran to the AV booth, found the tech, and said, "CUT THE AUDIO. NOW."
“What? Oh, okay…”
The guy running it immediately muted the speakers, and just like that, the moment passed. I stepped outside to laugh my ass off silently, regained my composure, and went back into the main hall.
When I came back in, my cousins were shaking their heads at me, smirking. There were still tears, but the major threat of full-on hysteria was avoided. The next part was going to be hard, and it was important to save our spirit for the final walk.
Each hand grabbed a handle on the casket, and we walked to the incinerator for the final goodbye. The weight of the casket was more than wood and metal—it was the weight of generations, of love, of loss. We held it together, as a family, and when it was time, we did what we had to do. The sound of the flames will stay with me forever, a mix of chest-filled cries and the finality of metal doors closing.
We cried, hugged, and said our goodbyes to Grandma. It was hard. It was family. We were strong together.
And then, like always, it was time to cook.
Imperfect Pho Night at a Funeral
The night before, my mom said something that made me pause. "Immediately after the funeral, you are making pho for everyone."
I felt my stomach drop. My shoulders tensed. My hands went numb. Me? There were dozens of other people who could cook. Why me? Oh, right—because I’ve been posting about pho for the last nine years. I said nothing. This was not a request.
This was Captain Mom.
So I nodded. "Yes, Mom." I was nervous as hell. This wasn’t any meal—this was the first time I was serving pho to my entire family. To me, pho is sacred. It’s the family obsession, the cultural obsession, the dish that must be perfect. They had seen me making pho for years on social media, but now, it was real. This was for 100 grieving people who hadn’t eaten noodles in two weeks due to the funeral superstition that says noodles during mourning cut your lifespan. Noodles, or strings, are like the representation of one’s lifeline. To eat noodles during a funeral is to cut your lifeline. And now, after the funeral service, we were breaking the noodle fast.
No pressure.
I ran through logistics with my mom like it was a military operation:
"When?"
"What time?"
"How many?"
But I already knew the answers. This was my rite of passage. Making pho for the whole family. If this was the first meal Grandma would have as a full-on spirit, then I wanted it to be great, as I was making pho for Grandma’s altar—the first meal of her afterlife. I wanted it to be perfect.
And it wasn’t. It was fine—but not my best.
I didn’t have enough time to do it my way, and there were ingredients I wasn’t allowed to use. The uncles and aunts doctored their bowls to their liking. The cousins gave me shit and were just trying to be nice, but it wasn’t in them to lie.
I wanted perfection. Instead, I got "good enough." To try and make me feel better, my cousins said, “This is the hood; we don’t care if the cut is perfect. We care if we can eat it. But do better next time.” I laughed, but their words stuck with me. It wasn’t about the pho—it was about showing up, about being there for each other. And that was enough.
Strapped & Cuffed (Not a Kink, This Time)
The day after the funeral, I was heading to my dad’s house before flying back to Hawaii. My uncle—who was on parole—said, "Oh, for real? I’m going. I wanna see your dad. He’s got the good weed."
"Aren’t you on parole? Can you even drive?"
"Oh, right, right—your aunt will drive."
So my aunt and uncle are giving me a ride, and when we’re about to pull off, he asks me, "Where’s he at?" I tell him the address, and he says, "Oh, fuck that, I’ll be right back." He leaves the car, and it’s just my aunt and me. She says, "He better not be getting what I think he’s getting." He comes back to the car and says, "Let’s go."
This was supposed to be the time when I just visited my dad, said goodbye, and got some food. Instead, the minute we drove two blocks away, we were pulled over by the police.
I remember being in the car, and my uncle says, "Jay, text your mom, tell her they’re taking me in tonight."
My aunt, wide-eyed and pregnant, looks at my uncle and says, "Did you bring your gun? Why the fuck did you bring your GUN!?"
I’m in the back seat, texting my mom. The officer comes over to the window and says, "You know why I pulled you over…" It’s a front, a made-up excuse about something related to the car. Their goal is to catch my uncle slipping.
The cop, with the light flashing into the car from the passenger side window, says to my uncle, who, by the way, is dressed in all blue, "You mind stepping out of the car?"
"Why do I gotta step out? I ain’t do nothing."
"You being smart right now?"
"Nah, I’m just saying…"
"Okay, well, then there are no issues with you stepping out."
"But I didn’t do anything…"
"...I’m going to ask you once…you riding dirty? If I search you, am I going to find any weapons?"
My uncle lets out a deep breath and says, "I got a Glock. Waistband."
The cop is now heightened and loud: "Alright. You’re going to listen to me and do exactly what I say."
My uncle shifts a bit, and the cop doesn’t like that: "DON’T FUCKING MOVE ‘TIL I SAY MOVE. Put your hands on the dash, and you’re NOT GOING TO MOVE. I am going to reach into the car and get your gun."
The cop reaches in and pulls out the gun. He says, "You…get out of the car. How can you be so dumb, Lasa? You’re on parole, man…"
He gets taken out of the car and handcuffed. I’m now in the backseat with my aunt, and they take me out of the car next. They have no idea who I am; my last name is different, and they have no idea if I’m some new guy, armed and dangerous.
They tell me to turn around, handcuff me, and then pat me down. They tell me to sit on the curb while my uncle is in the back of the police car, saying, "Ay yo, he’s got nothing to do with this…" In these moments, I can tell the thing that scared him more than the cops was still his older sister, my mom.
Cuffed and in shock, I’m looking out at an overpass. Concrete, streetlights, and flashing blue and red lights. Some glass on the road and rusted fences, my aunt crying, and my uncle in the back of the cruiser.
Just two weeks ago, I was living in a beautiful yurt in Kauai, where my time was spent trying to open coconuts to make coconut milk. Now I’m on pavement, staring at cars driving by, judging us on their way to wherever the fuck they were going. All I wanted to do was have dinner with my dad, and now I’m restrained, tired, and worried my uncle was headed back to jail.
The cop comes back, uncuffs me, and hands me my wallet. He tells me they’re taking my uncle in and that if I wanted to talk to him now, it would be a good idea. The worst part was when he said, "I’m just doing my job." I wanted to scream, to tell him what his job really was—hunting people like us, tearing families apart during a funeral. But I stayed silent. My mom would’ve killed me if I got in more trouble.
I go to the car, and my uncle puts his head out the window and says, "Jay, my necklace—take it and give it to your cousin."
My aunt couldn’t take it because there’s a rule about women not being able to touch blessed necklaces. I take it and tell him I love him and I’m sorry. "All good, you be good. Tell your mom I fucked up, and I love y’all."
They drive away, and I get in the car with my aunt. She’s about to break down crying, and I tell her we need to get to the house right now. She holds her tears for a little longer and realizes we needed to tell the family.
When we get back, all the cousins and uncles come out and ask what the fuck happened. Then a big shuffle happens, and someone says, "We need to get all the guns out of the house. Now." The night wasn’t over, and now the police had a reason to raid the house. Funeral or not, there was probable cause to search the house for any weapons. In just a few seconds, a couple of duffle bags loaded with guns leave the house.
Now, you’re probably wondering why there was a small armory at the house. Well, if you’ve been following along, Fresno, California, is a hotbed of gang activity. Allegedly, my family has some ties to some of that activity. Most people don’t mess with the house, but those five other families nearby who had deaths and were doing their own funerals—and had people donate money to their homes—well, we got word that a few of them got raided. There are actually people out there who would steal from the dead, and they were operating just blocks away from us. So while we were cooking, drinking, laughing, and crying, we also had to be prepared for war.
The reality is that people in the hood knew that Buddhist funerals meant a lot of money was going to be in certain houses. Usually, soft targets for a quick $10k or more. Grandma was very popular, and so my uncles and cousins decided it was best to post armed guards at all hours around the house. You’d think, why not just have the police nearby? When you think about the relationship we have with the cops, it’s not exactly the people we want in the neighborhood. No one trusts the police to be there 24/7 for two weeks; there are simply not enough police, and they are only ever called after the fact. Gangs get a bad rep in general, but they are—like the protests across America—an immune system response to a system that has failed its people.
Somehow, everything turned out okay. My mom was definitely pissed, but we were all happy no one got hurt. My uncle apologized, and that resulted in me getting yelled at for not taking the Uber alone. Family is complicated. He managed to get more parole time and was placed on house arrest. I believe he was one of the folks let out of jail early for good behavior, like Kenny, who we met earlier in this story.
Just to reiterate, my uncle is a good man who does some dumb things sometimes. The only reason he decided to be strapped was that he was more concerned with the rival gang and old wounds from past aggression. It was his sense of self-preservation that made him think he needed a gun in the neighborhood my dad happened to live in.
From the cops’ perspective, a former gang member dressed in ALL BLUE heading in the exact direction he shouldn’t be heading was plenty for them to stop the car just two blocks from the house. Yet, that night, no one got shot. We all got a bit emotional, but we were safe.
It was then that I realized exactly the kind of life my mother didn’t want me to grow up in. What’s absolutely insane is that in just a few short hours, I would have hugged them all and jumped back on my plane to my little yurt village on a farm in Hawaii.
[Kauai, Hawaii 2021 - Hood to Good, the Dynamic Range of Human Existence]
I sat staring at the horses for a day, still in disbelief that my life had such a strong contrast between handcuffs and concrete to coconuts and mountain ranges. There wasn’t really any time to process while I was in Fresno, so I took the day off to cry and sit in the sun. When I was good again, it was time to get back to work. We had a big event—my last event with this company before I set off on my next adventure.
The company was nice and gave their condolences, and while it was welcomed, I don’t think anyone could fully understand what I went through. They weren’t Laotian Buddhists, and they weren’t from the hood. There wasn’t anyone here who could connect the dots and truly relate to me. It was fine; I just thought I needed to get to work and get my mind off it all.
“Johnny, we’ve got a great menu, and Chef is bringing his own sous. Just try and help where you can,” says Adam.
“Sounds good. Who’s the sous?”
“Oh, his name is Kevin, K…something like Keo…I think. I forget; it’s a long last name.”
“Wait, he’s Asian?”
“I think he’s Laotian.”
“Adam, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was important?”
“Adam, how many Laotian chefs do you know who are trained by top-level, globally recognized chefs?”
“Oh, good point.”
We were cruising to procure ingredients for this fancy dinner, and I had no idea what we were cooking, but I was ready to chop, clean, and learn some new things. I was especially excited to meet Kevin, and when he showed up, I went right up to him and said,
“SA BAI DEE! I’m Johnny, I’m Lao.”
To which he replied, “What the hell are you doing here!?” This is starting to feel like a common greeting for Laotian Americans. I now know there are places out in the wild where Laotian communities are big, but this was not one of them. His surprise was met with a laugh and a handshake. Adam and Chef Ravi were talking, so I figured it was a good time to show Kevin around. After he put down his bags, we realized we had a lot of time, so I took him on a walk to this Buddha statue near a waterfall and man-made pond.
As we were walking, I stopped and said, “You know…we just met, but I think I need to tell you that my grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago.”
He stopped and said, “My grandmother passed away recently too. Few weeks ago.”
It was strange I could sense a similar energy. How is it that, in the story I’ve told you so far, there was someone I just met who fully understood with his heart what I was going through? I was happy and grateful and I am pretty sure I gave him a big hug.
Life works in mysterious ways, and the day Kevin showed up, I didn’t feel so alone in my grief. We started talking about being Lao, about the culture of food that surrounds our people, and the stories that are passed down from one generation to the next. I told him about the funeral, the cooking, and the slaughtered cow from the Mexican family friend…..
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Thank you for reading! This piece will be submitted to various publications and I am told sometimes they don’t like when the things are published already, so I can only give a small sample for now. Hope you understand, if you are dying to know what happens though and don’t have the cash to become a paid subscriber then shoot me a message.
This story means a lot to me. If it resonates, drop a comment or share it with someone who’d appreciate it. And if you’d like to see more stories like this, consider becoming a paid subscriber—it helps keep these stories alive.
Cheers - hope you enjoyed that!
Johnny
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