I was on a reality television show in South Korea and my 80-year-old birth grandmother saw the show. That’s how I found my birth family. In a nutshell, this is how I introduce my search and reunion story to people.
The longer version can be heard in my one-person show, “How to Be a Korean Woman,” which tells the story of my experience as an adoptee searching and reuniting with my birth family in Korea. This month it has returned to the nation’s premiere Jewish theater, Theater J, in Washington, DC, after a sold-out run last season.
Sun Mee Chomet at Theater J in How To Be a Korean Woman | Ryan Maxwell Photography
For generations, most of what is written about adoption has been by everyone except adoptees. Novels, movies and academic research are endlessly fascinated by “the orphan story.” I’m part of a generation of transracial adoptees that are coming-of-age and reclaiming the narrative.
Over 3,000 adult Korean adoptees return to Korea every year. Additionally, adoption affects almost ⅓ of the human population on our planet. I like to say everyone either knows, is partnered with, works with, or is related to an adoptee. Still, the inner life of adoptees is complex. Oftentimes we cannot articulate it to ourselves, let alone share it with those closest to us. I often say that in being adopted, we have perfected the Art of Adaptation; our ache to fit in and be accepted can cloud our own connection to our authentic selves.
For me, being adopted by a Jewish family meant I didn’t have to explain what it felt like to be “othered.” My grandparents were forced out of Vienna at the onset of WWII. When I was young, I was made fun of for being Asian American almost every day of elementary school. My grandfather was the one in my family that comforted me the most. He used to console me and say, “I know what it is to be other. I know what it is to be discriminated against. The sadness I feel when I think of Austria, it’s the same that you feel for Korea. It is the land of my home and the land of my estrangement in the same breath.”
I was always grateful for being adopted into a family that understood the impact of discrimination.
However, at the same time, my Jewish identity has always been questioned outside of my family circle. Adoptees are often welcomed with love into the cultures of their adoptive family. But as they leave the comfort of their immediate family, their culture is questioned. I have many experiences of being told I was not Jewish by other Jews because “I was Korean.” The excerpt below is from a scene in the play where I address the questioning of my Jewish identity:
“Even though I digested matzah ball soup before kimchi jigae.
Dipped parsley in salt before kimbap in sauce.
Lit candles for Chanukah before incense for ancestors.
And watched my father put on his yarmulke
before I put on my first hanbok.”
By sharing my personal story with the world, my goal is to represent the adoptee experience more authentically. Over the last decade of performing the play, I’ve discovered that it affects audience members in profound and surprising ways. People in the adoptee’s “constellation” (family members, partners, friends and allies) have found that the show paves the way for conversations that can be difficult yet healing. For others, I have been told that the show spoke to them as former foster youth or as a person with complex relationships with their parents. A dear friend said to me, “This play is not just about adoption. It’s about human longing to be whole and to know one’s own past.”
I hope my work challenges and expands people’s perceptions of what it means to be a Jewish person, and what it means to be an adoptee. I want to push the circle open. I invite the Jewish community to reckon with the limitations and racism within our culture. Currently performing this show at a Jewish theater, blocks away from the White House, feels like a huge step toward inclusivity for adoptee voices.
“How to Be a Korean Woman” is being presented by Theater J in Washington, DC from September 12-22, 2024. More information and tickets can be found here.
