North Star Journey cover art

North Star Journey

North Star Journey

Written by: MPR News
Listen for free

About this listen

 A journal exploring the history and culture of Minnesota communities. Inform these stories: mprnews.org/nsjCopyright 2026 Minnesota Public Radio World
Episodes
  • Mistaken: Minnesota’s Korean adoptees grapple with confessed systemic corruption

    Mistaken: Minnesota’s Korean adoptees grapple with confessed systemic corruption
    Nov 26 2025

    Earlier this year, South Korea’s government admitted that widespread corruption had tainted hundreds of thousands of adoptions from its country. Babies who were thought to be orphaned had living parents. Some children were trafficked. Paperwork was falsified. Records were destroyed.


    Korean adoptees worldwide were left reeling, including here in Minnesota, home to the largest population of Korean adoptees in the U.S. Many had already wrestled with questions of identity and racial and cultural belonging. Now even the small bits of information they had about their past could no longer be trusted.


    How are Korean adoptees who call Minnesota home responding to this foundational earthquake? Earlier this month, MPR News’ North Star Journey Live project hosted a gathering of adoptees who are deeply invested in the search for truth about their origin stories at Arbeiter Brewing in Minneapolis.


    Moderated by Twin Cities PBS reporter Kaomi Lee, who is herself an adoptee, the panel shared their personal histories and how the work they do today is moving the narrative forward.


    Guests:


    • Kaomi Lee is a reporter at Twin Cities PBS. She is also the host of Adapted, one of the longest running Korean adoptee podcasts.
    • Ami Nafzger has been working on behalf of Korean adoptees for decades as the founder of the Korean-based GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link) and the newer Minnesota-based Adoptee Hub.
    • Matt McNiff is the board president and director at Camp Choson, one of many Korean culture camps started in the Upper Midwest in response to the wave of adoptions from Korea.
    • Cam Lee Small is a licensed clinical therapist who specializes in adoption literacy, working both here in the Twin Cities and online. He’s also the author of “The Adoptee’s Journey.”
    • Mary Niedermeyer is the CEO of Communities Advancing Prosperity for Immigrants, also known as CAPI, a Minnesota-based nonprofit.


    Correction (Dec. 2, 2025): An earlier version of this story had an incomplete title for CAPI. The story has been updated.


    Find a resource guide to learn more about this topic at MPRnews.org.
    Show More Show Less
    58 mins
  • From Budweiser to kimchi, a new book tells the stories behind immigrant and community recipes

    From Budweiser to kimchi, a new book tells the stories behind immigrant and community recipes
    Nov 8 2025
    While holding a can of Budweiser and tending to chicken thighs on a backyard grill, Natalia Mendez talks about their grandfather.“This is like a smell of my childhood,” Mendez says.Mendez occasionally pours some beer on the chicken, making it sizzle and smoke, tempering the flames caused by fat dripping on coals. “My grandpa, when he taught my dad this recipe, said it has to be Budweiser,” Mendez says. Mendez muses that perhaps their grandfather preferred it because it was a rice beer, instead of wheat, and maybe that gave the chicken a unique flavor.“For a while, they were calling it ‘Budweiser America,’” Mendez continues. “It's interesting to think about my family's legacy to America and what that looks and felt like for them, because my grandpa was an immigrant and a civil rights activist.”‘Chefs that don't get their flowers’Artists Diana Albrecht and Ryan Stopera join Mendez at their south Minneapolis home as they cook their grandfather’s “Drunk Chicken.” It’s one of 12 recipes featured in Albrecht and Stopera’s new cookbook, “Back of House: Recipes from the Caretakers of Our Communities.”“Back of House” is different from the typical cookbook. There are recipes, yes, but Albrecht and Stopera also filled the book with the stories, portraits and documentary photos of the Minnesota people and communities behind the food, from steamed fish and apple stew to tongbaechu kimchi and mulawah flat bread.The chefs featured, who range from at-home to working chefs, are from the diasporas of Mexico, South Korea, Armenia, Ghana, China and beyond.The book “celebrates a lot of chefs that don't get their flowers, that aren't as visible as celebrity chefs, and that feels really special right now,” Stopera says. Many of them "are grandmas and aunties that literally supported the backbone of their family for generations based off the food that they made,” Albrecht says.Albrecht and Stopera began working on the book with the help of a Waterers grant a few years ago, before Albecht relocated from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The inspiration came partly from Albrecht’s explorations into her own heritage.“I am a Korean adoptee,” she says. “I grew up not knowing anything about Korean culture, and so for me, food was a really easy way in to learn about Korean culture.”Albrecht wanted to expand on her experience — to learn more about food and identity — and took the idea for a book to Stopera, who was running the former cafe at the Northeast Minneapolis arts organization Public Functionary.“Running a cafe for three years just deepened my appreciation for chefs and folks who feed their community,” Stopera says. “It was just an easy response to Diana like, ‘Let's do it.’”Together they photographed and interviewed the chefs at home with their families and friends, and Albrecht designed the book cover to cover. Turning memory into recordAlbrecht says she discovered that so many of the recipes have been passed down orally.“It’s all up in their head, and it’s never been archived, it’s never been written down,” she says. “Oral tradition is very important, but I think in this time, everything gets lost on the internet or lost in our beautiful, beautiful brains, and to have something that is tangible, written down, to preserve, to cherish — I'm learning the value and importance of that.”Stopera says the process of creating the book became a lesson in understanding community. “I've been thinking a lot about third spaces and the need for them, and just the need to gather in person,” he says. ”To spend nearly two years having really beautiful conversations with people about ancestry and culture and history, it made me more present and reminded me that the village can take care of each other.”Mendez knew they wanted to participate to help highlight how immigrant communities have shaped American food.“Especially right now in America, this project specifically feels really, really important, because people who look like me, people who look like us, are being pulled over and legally allowed to be racially profiled, being taken away,” Mendez says. “A lot of these people, especially the people that my grandpa was working with, himself included, were people who just wanted a job and they wanted more opportunities and a place to have kids and let them not have to labor in the fields.”'Drunk Chicken' for communityMendez’s grandfather, Salvador Sanchez Sr. was born in Northern Mexico and, as a young adult, moved to Milwaukee for work. There, Sanchez co-founded the Latin American Union for Civil Rights, one of the first migrant farm worker labor unions in Wisconsin, and organized marches and protests for the Obreros Unidos (United Workers) movement. He died in 2024, while the book was in process. “Drunk Chicken” calls for marinating bone-in skin-on chicken thighs in a mixture of chopped white onion, Adobo seasoning, soy sauce, and,...
    Show More Show Less
    4 mins
  • North Star Journey Live: Is college still worth it?

    North Star Journey Live: Is college still worth it?
    Nov 3 2025

    Traditionally, a college degree has been seen as a ticket to a secure future.


    But not today. Thanks to soaring tuition costs and weighty student loans, many people are questioning the value of college. A 2025 Pew Research poll found that only one in four U.S. adults says it’s “extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree” to get a well-paying job.


    And many young Americans — including Black, Latino and Indigenous students — contend they can build solid careers without seeking further education. In a 2025 survey by New America, a majority of young Americans agreed “there are lots of well-paying, stable jobs that people can find with only a high school diploma or GED.”


    So is college still worth it — especially when it comes to low-income or first-generation students?



    Is college still worth it?


































    MPR News’ North Star Journey Live project teamed up with Sahan Journal Community Conversations in October to host a panel discussing the pros and cons of higher education. They also discussed other burgeoning post-secondary options, like trade schools, apprenticeships and becoming an entrepreneur.


    Guests:


    • Frida Torres Macal is the founder of That Social Invite, an independent social media marketer focused on helping women-owned businesses and professionals grow.
    • Marquan Harper is a sophomore at the University of St. Thomas, where he is double majoring in Digital Media Arts and Marketing Management. He’s also the founder of Ador Hospitality, a Midwest-based hospitality group dedicated to enhancing the nightlife experience for young adults aged 18-24.
    • Jalayah Johnson is enrolled at the Finishing Trades Institute of the Upper Midwest as a second-year glazer apprentice for the Empire House.
    • Ali Osman is a high school counselor at South High School in Minneapolis.
    • Jessica Yang is the senior implementation manager at the Get Ready GEAR UP Minnesota program administered through the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.


    Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.

    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 17 mins
No reviews yet