Tastes Like War: A Memoir

Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021 This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking... [and] a potent personal history" (Shelf Awareness). 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 detailslanguage, 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 daughters search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mothers schizophrenia. In her mothers final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parents childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mothers 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 herbut also the things that kept her alive. An exquisite commemoration and a potent reclamation. Booklist (starred review) A wrenching, powerful account of the long-term effects of the immigrant experience. Kirkus Reviews