RECIPE AS RITUAL: HOW TO MAKE KIMBAP AS A KOREAN ADOPTEE IN JUST 24 EASY STEPS [schuyler swenson]

Ever since I first learned about the Korean holiday, Chuseok 추석 -- it's a celebration of the harvest and paying respect to the ancestors, kind of like a Korean Thanksgiving minus the genocide -- I've thought about how Korean adoptees, some of us without direct connections to our Korean ancestry or traditions, can partake in the celebration. Part of what is so liberating about our experience as transnational, transracial Korean adoptees is that there is no blueprint. Very few came before our generation and very few will come after us. We are given an opportunity to make up our own form of ceremony and tradition as we go, bridging two distinct identities and histories in the process.

So to close out this month of considering, constructing and archiving ritual, this video recipe I hope represents a form of Korean diasporic ritual, a practice that can be shared and repeated as a way to celebrate the harvest, food, and the ancestors as adoptees.