Jonathan Gold, iconic Los Angeles food writer, passed away on Saturday. Just as I heard the news, I was shoving a donut in my face and enjoying local art in pleasant summer evening air.

LA-inspired cupcakes: jamaica-lime, brown butter peach, michelada

I felt particularly sad about Gold dying. It’s not as if I knew him personally, or even saw him often on television. I did pour through his books and reviews of restaurants. When the food truck craze hit, I appreciated that Gold encouraged eaters to frequent the trucks started and owned by immigrants and children of immigrants. He challenged the whole notion of “exotic” food, suggesting instead that Los Angeles is home to traditions and cultures that often center around food. Instead of writing “critically,” Gold pointed us to the “unknown” eateries around the city that make me homesick when I’m away for too long.

As I have been researching and interviewing for the mobile exhibit project Golden State Sacred (you can follow @goldenstatesacred on Instagram, shameless plug), my goal remains the same even as the design of the exhibit shifts. Los Angeles is a global city of untold stories. My hope was to begin collecting these stories and stewarding them through the objects on display. So far, I have been so lucky to meet people gracious enough to share their stories with me, even beyond their faith. What is amazing to me is how everyone makes a way here, somehow.

We have much work to do. The cost of living in California is beyond atrocious. Despite what seems like a new luxury apartment building going up every day in the greater Los Angeles area, affordable housing is dire. As a surgical resident, my sister saw her fair share of addiction and substance abuse. While these should not be political bargaining chips and have been used as such in the past, we cannot deny that people suffer. We cannot deny that California is as much a police state as every other, and people of color experience racism and different kinds of violence every day. This state is soaked with the blood of California Indians who worked through forced labor to build the now prized missions. It is stained with the chain link fences that caged American citizens. It is responsible for the murder of unarmed black bodies and the exclusion of human beings based on alleged legal documentation.

The stories that I have collected- as Gold collected through food and dining- give me reason to confront the violence and erasure that religion has caused on this stolen land. Saturday was a day of mourning for the children who have been separated- it was, at the same time, a celebration of young people that organized and led the action in downtown Los Angeles. I hope to keep the stories alive because they deserve honor and remembrance in the years to come. Just as Gold left glamour and ritz to the other food critics, I want to make myself uncomfortable enough to keep learning every day.