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Chargement... Tastes Like War: A Memoirpar Grace M. Cho
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. This book provides an interesting look at the aftermath of the Korean War. The author is the daughter of an American soldier stationed in Korea and a Korean woman who worked at the army base. The memoir deals primarily with the life of the author and her mother after they arrive in the small town to live with Grace's father. There is racism, and trying to fit in. I liked the way food was used to highlight cultural differences and expectations. After Grace's mother becomes mentally ill (later diagnosed as schizophrenia), Grace begins to research what life was like for women during and immediately after the Korean war. She also tries to maintain a connections with her increasingly reclusive mother; and with her father who has left her mother. Again, food plays an important role in recalling memories and building bonds between mother and daughter. I found the book interesting. There is a lot of jumping around in time periods, which was annoying and somewhat confusing at times. I was not aware of the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the story. Not great, but not bad either. Tastes Like War is a memoir written by the daughter of a Korean mother and American father. Growing up, Grace Cho had known her parents met when her father, a merchant marine, was stationed in Korea during the Korean War, and that her mother, a "war bride", was an exotic outsider in her father's economically depressed hometown in Washington State, but it wasn't until her mother changed so dramatically (and not until much later diagnosed with schizophrenia) that she started researching the condition of Korean women during the war and the long-buried trauma that was her mother's lifelong burden and probable cause of her mental illness and decline from vibrant, sexy suburban mother to the reclusive and paranoid person she she became. I picked up Tastes Like War because it was selected as an OverDrive Big Library Read and it also fit the Massachusetts Center of the Book Reading Challenge for May -- nonfiction on a topic that is new to you. Even though I'm around the age of the author, I knew very little about the time of the Korean War. This memoir begins with Grace Cho's mother, who was an excellent cook but wanted her daughter to be a successful academic and discouraged her daughter's interest in cooking or any kind of manual labor, then branches out into numerous topics from a personal and sociological point of view -- how women of her mother's age were treated by the Korean government; how mental illness in women is diagnosed and treated; how preparing meals for her mother using recipes from her mother's Korean past releases her mother's long-buried emotions and stirs up memories. This was OK. There was a lot of bouncing around in terms of timeline. It was interesting to hear the experience from someone from Korea. And also dealing with someone with schizophrenia. I also googled when I finished the book and it seems like there's some controversy regarding a lot of the facts in the book. I do however want to look up the if it's true that women can develop schizophrenia later in life due to hormone changes. This is a very personal memoir of a woman primarily with regard to her relationship with her mother who was a war bride brought home by her dad from the Korean War. There are three stages in the book. First, the period of the author's youth as her mother trias to adjust to living in a small town in Washington state. The second periods deals with her mother's many mental health issues. The third part details Cho's relationship with her mom late in life. This is a wonderful tribute to a woman who suffered much but raised a great daughter. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
Prix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
Biography & Autobiography.
Sociology.
Nonfiction.
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 detailsâ??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 herâ??but also the things that kept her Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)305.48Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people Women Women by social groupClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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I found this book very interesting, as Cho's attitudes toward her mother and father and their communities shifted as she better understood each of them.
**Please see the review by Grace M Cho's brother under the pseudonym Daniel Cho ("Neville") on Goodreads. Grace Cho's brother, sister-in-law, and niece--who are all in the book--have fought strongly against it, claiming it to be full of lies (some of which can be proven with immigration records, birth certificates, and more). ( )