Book: Tastes Like War

[elusivek]

Tastes Like War: A Memoir
Grace M. Cho
Amazon Product Link

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 parent’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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Libby promoted book of the month or something, immediate loan with no waitlist. So I thought I’d dip my reading into a memoir.

I did enjoy the book at first, but later read a review in GR that’s by the brother, felt a little letdown that many of the incidents could be lies. I’m not exactly surprised as throughout the book until the so-called “big reveal” (the whatever the sister in law told her; I’m trying to avoid spoilers), it was like a planned buildup to it. Maybe I have the benefit of knowing the history, but I guessed the “big reveal” way from the start already.

Anyway, the parts that I enjoyed about the book wasn’t any of the family-related drama things, so no big loss for me.

I enjoyed the cooking parts and the studies and interpretation of how food is a love language and all that. I guess what I enjoyed from the book was the sociology or anthropology-related…. discussions of the topic of food.

Comments

[einhornmaedchen]

The book sounds interesting, I might give it a try :)