Tastes Like War: A Memoir

Recommended by Scott Murry, Senior Designer, Harvard Library

Grace Cho chronicles her mother’s life from Korea to the Pacific Northwest. Koonja, Cho’s mom, was born into a turbulent era of subjugation and experienced the terrors of war before moving with her white American husband to a small town in rural Washington state. Cho connects her mother’s trauma to her challenges with schizophrenia. The act of cooking together becomes an empowering creative outlet on her worst days to find a sense of agency and self.