ISPS-US Dec-Jan Book Club: Tastes Like War by Grace Cho

About the Book Club

Come join the December-January ISPS-US Book Club. This month we will be reading “Tastes Like War" by Grace Cho. Members of the book club read together and discuss the book on a special list-serv. 
Then, we will have a Q & A live with the authors on Zoom, January 27th at 4:30pm EST featuring a conversation with Grace Cho and Claire Bien on psychosis and the Asian diaspora.  

It is free to join the book club, but donations are greatly appreciated to keep our organization thriving! 

Here’s the full description:

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.

The book can be purchased where good books are sold, including Amazon.