What does it take to become American and what gets lost along the way? Minnesota-based writer Sun Yung Shin explores those questions in her new memoir, “Heart Eater.” Read on for a closer look at her transnational adoption story and how you can hear from her at her book launch in Minneapolis on Tuesday.

But you don’t have to wait that long to engage with the arts. In St. Paul, listen to live music at the Selby Ave. Jazz Fest or explore South Asian feminist art at St. Catherine University. In Minneapolis, make your own crafts at the Twin Cities Maker Fest or spend Sunday exploring Cedar-Riverside as it comes alive with music, food and dance.

Heart Eater

Sun Yung Shin, 52, doesn’t know the exact day she was born.

She knows she was born in South Korea. She knows she was somewhere between 18 months and 2 years old when she arrived in the United States and she knows that her white adoptive parents brought her into their family and raised her in Brookfield, Illinois. 

“I had a really civic childhood,” she said. “My picture was in the newspaper when I was naturalized at 4½ years old, and I was welcomed by local civic organizations. I don’t really remember but my parents kept all of this ephemera.” 

The uncertainty about her early life in South Korea is one of the starting points for Shin’s new memoir “Heart Eater.” The book follows Shin as she moves to Minnesota to finish her undergraduate degree and begins untangling what it means to grow up between cultures. 

Her paperwork, some of which is reproduced in the book, documents pieces of her journey from South Korea to the United States. 

Documents aren’t necessarily neutral accounts of the past, Shin said. There can be errors and omissions that can leave adoptees with records that don’t fully reflect the circumstances of their separation from their families. 

“There’s not always a way to know what is true or what isn’t true,” she said. “For a lot of transnational adoptees, there’s a lot of ambiguous loss around our histories.” 

Shin sees international adoption as part of a longer history of institutions separating children from their families in the United States. She connects it to the placement of Native children in boarding schools designed to assimilate them, as well as the separation of children from their parents during federal immigration operations. 

“We have children whose parents are being detained by immigration agents and then those children are being placed into foster families, being made available for adoption, even when they have their parents,” Shin said. 

“Adoption is often promoted as purely humanitarian,” she added. “But there can be a widescale theft of people’s lives” — severing connections to family, history and genealogy. 

Though Shin began exploring her history several years ago, her memoir took shape after Black Lawrence Press invited her to become the first author in its Immigrant Writing Series. She’ll celebrate the book launch at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis on Tuesday. 

The book’s title, “Heart Eater,” was inspired by a trip to South Korea, where Shin met a woman who told her she had a “fox face.”

The comment reminded Shin of the gumiho, a nine-tailed fox spirit in Korean folklore. In some versions of the story, the gumiho must eat human livers or hearts to survive, gain power, or become human. 

For Shin, the creature became a visual metaphor for the ways immigrants, women and people of color consume parts of their identity to assimilate, while holding onto the instincts that help them survive. 

“It’s my attempt to at least explain: Here’s how I feel about these things I’ve been thinking about my whole life,” she said. “Language is really like water. It can go anywhere. It can get through the cracks.” 

Makers in Minneapolis

Start your Saturday with Twin Cities Makers in south Minneapolis. The nonprofit’s third annual festival will kick off at 10 a.m. with a drum and dance circle led by the Mexica-Nahua group Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, followed by K-pop dance with the Pan Asian Arts Alliance. 

Hands-on workshops will include mending clothes, making your own chopsticks and trying your hand at weaving, along with live demonstrations of glassmaking, sand casting and screen printing. 

You can also browse work from 150 local artists, check out eight food trucks and join a Somali dance workshop at 4 p.m.

Join a jazz flash mob

Know how to play an instrument? Bring it to the 25th annual Selby Ave. Jazz Fest on Saturday. The music festival returns to St. Paul with a New Orleans-style brass parade and a flash mob for musicians. Download the sheet music ahead of time, then bring your instrument and play alongside the group from 11:30 to 11:40 a.m. 

Following performances from local artists and ensembles, singer-songwriter Stokley will headline. Listen to his latest single “Need Love” for a sneak peek. From 8 to 10 p.m., musicians can also sit in on a jam session at the Walker West Music Academy.

South Asian feminist art

The Paglees, a national feminist collective of South Asian diaspora artists — opens its new exhibit, “Between Reason and Madness,” at The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery on Saturday. 

The collective’s name is inspired by “paglee,” or “pagil” — which translates to “crazy woman” in several South Asian languages. Through painting, fiber art, installation and performance, the artists reclaim the label to challenge patriarchy, colonialism and other systems of oppression. 

Participating artists include Minnesota-based textile artist Fawzia Khan, whose work reflects her Pakistani roots, alongside creatives with roots in India, Bangladesh, Trinidad and Tobago.

Cedar-Riverside block party 

Minneapolis’ Cedar-Riverside neighborhood will close its streets for Cedarfest on Sunday. Instead of driving, you can walk, bike, skate or even catch a camel ride at the block party. 

Along the way, explore 21 food trucks, browse a makers market, hang out in a traditional Somali aqal hut and get some henna. When you’re ready to dance, head to the Riverside or Red Sea stages for performances from Afrocontigbo, Jada Brown and Fanaka Nation, among others. 

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