Study these terms before completing the activities below.
1. inheritance
something received from a previous generation; can be material objects, traditions, or ways of being
“Her grandmother's recipe for soup is an inheritance — passed down without written instructions, held in muscle memory and careful observation. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
2. legacy
what a person leaves behind for those who come after; a lasting impact or influence
“Her grandmother's legacy isn't the soup recipe itself but the understanding that knowledge lives in people, not paper. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
3. custodian
a person entrusted with guarding or caring for something important on behalf of others
“She sees herself as a custodian of her family's stories — responsible for keeping them alive until she can pass them on. (from "What I Keep")”
4. oral tradition
the practice of passing knowledge, stories, and culture through spoken word and demonstration rather than writing
“Her grandmother's kitchen is a site of oral tradition — knowledge transmitted through watching, doing, and listening, not reading. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
5. transmit
to pass something from one person or generation to another; to send forward
“Every time her grandmother makes the soup, she transmits more than a recipe — she passes down a whole way of being in the world. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
6. lineage
descent from an ancestor; the family or cultural line from which a person comes
“She thinks about her lineage every time she writes in that notebook — all the people who came before her whose stories she's now responsible for. (from "What I Keep")”
7. embodied
expressed or contained within a physical or bodily form; felt and known through lived experience
“The knowledge is embodied in her grandmother's hands — the way she moves, the taste memory, the instinct that no recipe can capture. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
8. continuity
an unbroken connection between past, present, and future; the quality of remaining consistent over time
“Writing in the notebook is an act of continuity — a thread connecting her to her grandmother and her grandmother's grandmother. (from "What I Keep")”
9. vestige
a trace or small remaining part of something that once existed more fully
“The last vestige of her grandfather's Tagalog is the way he says certain words — faded but still present. (from "My Grandfather's Last Words")”
10. steward
a person who carefully manages and protects something entrusted to their care
“She sees herself as a steward, not an owner — someone who holds the stories long enough to pass them on. (from "What I Keep")”
11. reciprocal
given or felt by each side toward the other; a relationship that goes both ways
“The kitchen is a reciprocal space — her grandmother teaches her, but she also keeps her grandmother's knowledge alive by listening. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”
12. intergenerational
relating to, involving, or affecting more than one generation of a family or community
“The kitchen table is where intergenerational knowledge lives — where a granddaughter learns from a grandmother who learned from her mother. (from "The Recipe She Never Wrote Down")”