I was looking forward to Chapter 24: Taiko Drums and Sushi, Perogies and Sauerkraut: Mirroring a Half-Life in Multicultural Curriculum from a talk in 1990 by Ted Aoki, from the text Curriculum in a New Key – The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki, and finally read it today. What excited me were the terms “perogies and sauerkraut” in the title, as I am part Ukrainian, and these foods mean a lot to me.

The chapter reminded me of another from the text, Chapter 20, and this similarly made me think of my ethnic identity, what history and cultures make me “me.” As a child, I felt lost and only felt more found reading the stories of my ancestors, although the recorded stories and names are a fraction of the lives they had. Aoki writes that “others help us in our own self-understanding” (Aoki, p. 382), and I found this held after reading his thoughts shared in the text, and I reflected more on who I am as a person.

The chapter dives into the idea of multiculturalism and brings forth the concept that “in the midst of many cultures” we can enter the “inter of interculturalism.” He notes that this is another place “alive with tension” and “indwelling here, the quest is not so much to rid ourselves of tension… but more so to seek appropriately attuned tension” (Aoki, p. 382). He then shares stories about what might be meant by “inter in interculturalism, a living in the midst of differences” (Aoki, p. 383).

For this post, I will share a story to show how the meanings in this text help me see anew. I laugh when I think about the differences between how my grandparents made sauerkraut and how I make it today (I actually made some today!). Making sauerkraut for my Ukrainian grandmother meant an extra-large barrel, a giant bag of salt, cabbages like monsters, a monumental wooden paddle, and a kitchen smelling like cabbage for weeks. It was quite the family process and required four adults and long, backbreaking days.

How I do this now is markedly different. I take one head of cabbage and process this into at most two jars. The cabbage chosen is always organic and special in some way, but I have not grown it myself in the past few years. Today, the cabbage was from a best friend. I love making sauerkraut to think about my ancestors and more particularly, my grandparents, and because I love it.

Aoki’s insights in this chapter re-sparked my idea of what it means to have Ukrainian ancestry and how this has changed over the generations. For me, I have a different view of being Ukrainian than my grandmother did, and I am truly “less” Ukrainian than she was. I find myself living amid differences not only between many cultures, but within my own family’s culture, through time and space. It feels to me like there is just the right amount of “tension” here in the differences to appreciate and understand the past, as well as the present that I am living.

Photo by Kylie Van Eaton.

Curriculum in a New Key | The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki | Ted T. (n.d.). Retrieved July 4, 2024, from https://www-taylorfrancis-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/pdfviewer/