Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details-language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life.
Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter's search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother's schizophrenia. In her mother's final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her mother's childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother's multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her-but also the things that kept her alive.
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I AM FIVE YEARS OLD, walking down Main Street with my family.- PROLOGUE: CHEHALIS, WASHINGTON, 1976
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(@FeministPress, 18 May 2021, e-book, 289 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc, #biglibraryread)
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I loved Tastes Like War. This memoir made me cry a lot. My wife has schizophrenia so I could relate to the author and her mother even though my wife's behaviour is not as extreme. I loved the way the book moves effortlessly between past and present charting the author's complex relationship with her mother and her mother's illness. I found the author's obsessive reading of every book she could find about schizophrenia to help understand her mother heart-breaking and touching. I also found the way she connects with her increasing ill and withdrawn mother through cooking incredibly sad and touching. This is an incredible book.
