It was taken by someone at the Holt International adoption agency. A notecard is leaning against the front of my sweater. On it is written in English: my name Shin, Sun Yung, my orphan case number K-6596, and my birthdate.
The back of the photo, like the back of a mirror, is blank. My name, the case number, and my birthdate are all assigned by the agency. You could say that my case number was a fact and my birthdate and my name were, and are, fictions.
With this kind of origin, how could I not become a writer? Out of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, or any writing system, an identity can be assigned, fixed—and made, if not real, then socially legible and governmentally legal. Humans have been using materials such as polished obsidian as mirrors for 8,000 years.
Mirrors manufactured in China, technology that could date as far back as the Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD), eventually made their way to Korea and Japan. One of my favorite stories from The Story Bag, one of the few books I had as a child that were from or about Korea, is “The Bridegroom’s Shopping.” I suspect every adopted person or anyone raised in a family or situation in which she is not genetically related to anyone else has a special relationship to mirrors. This folktale opens by describing a venerable old farming family whose only daughter has just married.
As was the custom in ancient Korea before the Joseon Dynasty and its adoption of Confucianism, husbands lived with their wives’ families. The inciting incident of the story is the bridegroom’s trip, which begins at the matrilocal dwelling: A few days after the marriage it so happened that the bridegroom had to go to town on some business. As he prepared to leave, his bride asked him: “Will you please buy me a comb in town?” “Why, of course,” he answered, all eager to please his pretty bride.
However, his wife knew that her husband was a very forgetful man. Hadn’t her in-laws told her so? As she wondered how he could be made to remember, she chanced to look at the sky.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
