Death Ritual: Exploring Liminal Spaces, Han, Language, and Mu via the Princess Bari Myth

A Space For Collective Storytelling, Creative Text/Art Making, Excavation, Wonderment, Speculation, Ceremony & Ritual

w/ Janice Lee

Mondays 12-2PM Pacific beginning July 21st (July 21, July 28, August 4, August 11)

(Recordings will be made available to all registrants for a limited period afterwards.)

"I have almost arrived at a final destination. Near the bridge that crosses into that other world made strange by death, a shadowy figure waits to make a reparative gesture—to perform the rite of unknotting our tightly wound han, unknotting it in a way that leaves us tied but loosens the bindings. And there at the edge, in the space that hovers over the gap, I can see her somewhere below—not where we thought we had secretly buried her, but in the texture of life, in the ground of possibility for the thing I call my self."
– Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War

“The journey of Paridegi’s abandonment can be read as the process of how, in the pre-modern period, women’s consciousness placed deep inside women came to be externalized. We can learn from this that the women in those times understood their births and lives as a journey of death. The women within and without the text of the Abandoned accept the dimensions of life and death as a reality where the two are not distinguished. They accept that to live is to die and to die is to live."
– Kim Hyesoon, Autobiography of Death, translated by Don Mee Choi

"‘Daughter’ implies a sequence, ancestral chronology. I, on the other hand, predated my mother the same way my daughter now predates me.” 
– Mirene Arsanios, The Autobiography of a Language

"Mark the mouth. It is no mere vocal instrument. It is a topological dip in the body that locates the emergence of language in a place." -
– Sora Y. Han, Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition

The 바리대기 (Princess Bari) myth is more than just a story, but a cultural myth that intersects with individually felt and personally lived experience. For many Korean diasporic subjects, especially women and gender nonbinary beings, this story of abandonment, of intergenerational trauma, and of inheritance is indicative of the ways in which stories and myths reflect lived realities and reside inside real human bodies. Too, the Princess Bari myth is the basis of actual shamanic ritual and its contents constitute one of the most widely practiced shamanic songs and shamanic rituals, with variations, interpretations, and retellings that reflect a variety of emotional orientations. The story today as myth, song, and death ritual is a uniquely Korean reflection of han and haunting, a haunting that continues to allow voice for ghosts of the past, and to allow new avenues of writing and rewriting stories that haunt the future.

In Korean, the word for death (돌아가시다) means return. To return to the place we came from, to go back to. Return to the mother. Death as the mother as other as original place. Death as return. Princess Bari never arrives, but only returns, again and again.

In this 4-week creative lab and collectively-created container for storytelling, artmaking, excavation and ritual, some of the themes and questions we will explore include:

• Liminal spaces in the Princess Bari myth, particularly the threshold between life and death

• The Korean concept of han as central to shamanic death rituals

• Grief as a constellation both above us and within us, and the shamanic role of transmuting grief

• The phenomenon of "hearing" spirits or ghosts, and the creative possibilities of haunting

• Excavating mother/daughter relationships beyond inheritance and wounding

• The difficulty of articulation or expression in language(s) due to displacement and colonialism

• The importance of ritual and the power of written language

• The history of Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and its unique features

• The concept of mu (무 / 無 / 巫)

The main texts we will read together are:

• Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War by Grace M. Cho (excerpt)

• Princess Abandoned: Essays by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi 

• Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi *

• Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha *

• Mu, 49 Marks of Abolition by Sora Y. Han *

(* For the 3 texts marked by an asterisk, participants will be responsible for obtaining copies of these books on their own, before the lab begins. For anyone needing financial support in purchasing books, please reach out to janice@corporealwriting.com after registering for assistance.)

There will also be special guest visitors! TBA

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This event offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$480 Partner 

$320 Supporter (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$250 Companion 

$120 Friend 

Scholarships are also available for BIPOC and anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

Testimonials:

“Janice's class was transformative for me on all the levels: creative, psychic, literary, healing. The readings and viewings were robust and inspiring.”

“The combination of instruction, writing prompts, readings and shamanic healing practices were both inspiring and beneficial. I was often surprised by the doors it opened in my writing process and am grateful for the expansion of my worldview. Kudos Janice on an amazing holding of space to allow vulnerability to transform into healing. It was a very rich and transformative experience.”

“It was so wonderful to work with Janice. I would do so again in a heartbeat. She held the online space with care and attentiveness, she was warm, and she was focused… The ritual elements of the workshop opened up pathways to releasing accumulated griefs, and the meditations brought me to new understandings of myself. The space she created for vulnerable dialogues and connections was something that I haven't experienced in any other writing class.”

“If you're ready for deep self-reflection, deep imagination, deep connection, and deep care, work with Janice. The resources she shares on all levels -- literary, organizational, creative, interpersonal, and spiritual -- are designed to allow those who work with her to define our own path(s) in her company. Janice's courses are radical autonomous pedagogy in action…Thank you so much for this experience into my own underworld, lineage and present power. I feel unlocked by it.”

JANICE LEE (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 8 books of fiction, creative nonfiction, & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021), Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award, and A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima (Meekling Press, 2023). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Her next book seeks to explore ties between the Korean cultural concept of han, narratives of inherited trauma in the West, the Korean folk traditions and shamanic practices of her ancestors (especially rituals around death), the history and creation of Korean script (Hangul), and revisions of the Korean myth of Princess Bari. Lee teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, bringing together elements from several different lineages as a mesa-carrying practitioner of the Q’ero tradition of medicine work, an aspirant for the Order of Interbeing, and student of Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition of engaged Buddhism. Her Dharma name is Compassionate Heart of the Source. She also incorporates elements of ancestor work, Korean shamanic ritual (Muism), plant medicine & flower essences, card readings & divination, and interspecies communication. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is the Operational Creative Director at Corporeal Writing and an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University. She can be found online at http://janicel.com and Instagram: @diddioz.