March 2008:

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home

By Kim Sunée

“I think what’s most interesting about today is that, in some way, we are all searching for home–whether we long to go back to one (that may or may not have existed), or we are fighting to keep one; we all want to land in a place where we feel safe

and loved and can love”…

Kim Sunée, Korean adoptee and bestselling author, found a culinary path to her past through her passion for great food and good cooking. As a toddler, she was abandoned in Korea by her mother; left in a busy marketplace with only a handful of food. Kim was found by police a few days later, clutching her few remaining crumbs. Kim was adopted by an American couple and moved to New Orleans where she lived with her Caucasian adoptive family until her late teens. The story takes another true-life Cinderella-spin in Europe when Kim falls in love with an elegantly wealthy older man. Poignantly written and wistfully titled, Trail of Crumbs was penned as a memoir to make sense of Kim’s personal search for ‘home’ and identity. For the author, food provides a comforting touchpoint in a wildly compartmentalized life; it creates and re-creates memories, and ties Kim’s life in Sweden, France and the USA together with recipes and relationships. Inevitably, Kim’s emotional hunger leads her to follow her trail of crumbs back to Korea, where she again seeks a sense of place and a sense of self that has remained outside the reach of her beauty, wealth and opportunity.

The book’s poetic prose, bittersweet subject matter and sensual foodie experience captures the reader on a variety of sensory levels. We appreciate Kim’s journey, we fervently wish her well, we want her at our dinner table. It is fitting that Sunee eventually lands a job as Food Editor of a national magazine…cooking grounds Kim, and connects her; the holistic process assuages a primal loss.

"For now," she writes, "I have learned that home is in my heart -- in all the places and people I have left behind. It's in the food that I cook and share with others, in the cities I will come to know, and in the offerings of street vendors from around the world -- from South Korea to Provence -- in the markets I have yet to discover."

What Can Parents Discover from Trail of Crumbs?

What can adoptive parents do to help their children feel safe and loved where we have landed them? Can we support adoption’s lifelong process, and offer ourselves unconditionally to our children as they make their own, sometimes painful, searches for ‘home’? As you read Trail of Crumbs, consider:

What can we learn from Kim Sunée’s international adoption journey?

As a transracial adoptee, did Kim feel more (or less) accepted and at home in Scandinavia, Europe and Korea, than within her adopted culture in the USA?

Can adoptive parents help to instill a sense of ‘home’ and connectivity within their children? Is there a secret recipe for raising a happy internationally adopted child?

Parenting Ingredients?

The elusive ‘secret recipe’ ingredients appear in A Trail of Crumbs, but they are not listed in the book’s recipe index. If we read between the lines and over the mouth-watering meals, the author makes her case for connectedness, for understanding and for empathy. As adoptive parents, we can take special note of our own children’s truths and needs, and of what Kim has written:

“In the end, the hunger for home and friendship may be the most important hunger of all to feed and nourish.”

For more information about Kim Sunée and her cooking: www.kimsunee.com

-

NEW! TAPESTRY RECIPE: QUICK-FIX KIMCHI FROM A TRAIL OF CRUMBS... "Korean cuisine--hearty, rustic and beautiful--shines as the unsung hero of Asian cooking. I make this express version of cabbage kimchi--sometimes adding or substituting for the cabbage sliced cucumbers, zucchini or bean sprouts--whenever I long for a spicy hit of Korea." - Kim Sunée, author

-

PARENTING ARTICLE: COOKING LESSONS... An adoptive mom learns the art of Chinese cooking, and the greater importance of feeding a hungry heart (includes a great parent-child recipe for Plain Fried Rice).