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A review by alekz
Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
"Tastes Like War" by Grace Cho is a memoir that also straddles the line toward academic.
Cho is a professor and writes about her life as it relates to her mother and their immigration to the US from Korea. Cho tells us of her mother's development of schizophrenia, her upbringing in the Korean War, her experience as a state sanctioned sex worker for the US military, and their experiences as Korean immigrants in a very small, white town in the Pacific Northwest. Cho both lets us into her life and her family with beautiful clear prose and vulnerability, and contextualizes the generational trauma of herself and her mother through memoir and academic dives into these huge looming societal and cultural traumas. You learn so much about colonialism, imperialism, the culture of sex work not just in Korea but most notably in Korea in the beginning of the 20th century, about schizophrenia and the huge difference in its manifestation in the US and other countries - that schizophrenia is a social disorder, that our culture exacerbates it, that people from India (for example) can experience remission in far higher levels. You learn about the importance of food as love, as communication, as communion, as memory, as survival.
Cho is a professor and writes about her life as it relates to her mother and their immigration to the US from Korea. Cho tells us of her mother's development of schizophrenia, her upbringing in the Korean War, her experience as a state sanctioned sex worker for the US military, and their experiences as Korean immigrants in a very small, white town in the Pacific Northwest. Cho both lets us into her life and her family with beautiful clear prose and vulnerability, and contextualizes the generational trauma of herself and her mother through memoir and academic dives into these huge looming societal and cultural traumas. You learn so much about colonialism, imperialism, the culture of sex work not just in Korea but most notably in Korea in the beginning of the 20th century, about schizophrenia and the huge difference in its manifestation in the US and other countries - that schizophrenia is a social disorder, that our culture exacerbates it, that people from India (for example) can experience remission in far higher levels. You learn about the importance of food as love, as communication, as communion, as memory, as survival.
And all of this told from Grace - a Korean American who loves her mother deeply, who wants to untangle the knot of trauma from her mother's life to free her - or maybe herself - from it's oppressive power as inexpressible. This book is a must read.
As the child of a mother with mental illness, as the child of a father whose love language is cooking, as a writer, as a reader, this book was phenomenal. It had me gasping out loud, it had me choking up, it had me remembering my mother and my lifelong personal work of trying to untangle the knot of her trauma.
As a white person, I am so grateful to be able to hear the stories of those living lives I'll never be able to fathom.
And, professors! This can be assigned for classes anywhere from Women's and Gender Studies, Social and Cultural importance of Food, Korean History, Race in and Out of the US, Psychology classes, Social and cultural relationships with Mental Illness. It's written very clearly, very eloquently, and without any jargon. It's easily understandable for people unfamiliar with any of the above things, and is primarily a memoir, so don't be afraid of the nod to academia!