Summary of Grace M. Cho's Tastes Like War

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I visited my mother, who was confined to her apartment, and she had never before been outside without her. The house was filled with her favorite colors and neutral tones, which reminded me of the creamy mushroom casseroles on the dinner tables of my American cousins.

#2 My mother had never been outside the house without her. She hated the name of the flower that was growing on the balcony, because it sounded like cycle. She was tired of the same thing over and over.

#3 In 2001, my mom was living with me in Queens. She’d hardly been eating for years, and when the Twin Towers were hit, she did nothing to warn me.

#4 My mom had never been outside the house without her. She hated the name of the flower that was growing on the balcony because it sounded like cycle. She was tired of the same thing over and over.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350032499

IRB Media

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Insights on Grace M. Cho's Tastes Like War

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

My mother’s life was spent in constant movement, from one temporary place to another. She had never had a permanent home. The renovation of her apartment was a labor of love and filial duty. It was a step up from my New York City apartment’s guest room, where she lived for seven months during the renovation.

#2

My mother, who was diagnosed with dementia, hated the name Cyclamen. She was tired of the same thing over and over. She would constantly watch the hands on the clock move until noon, then get up and eat lunch. She would wash dishes, then sit some more until the sun went down.

#3

My mother had been losing weight for years, and in December 2001, she moved into an apartment in Manhattan. She didn’t want to eat, and they tried some of the same tricks I’d used when she was at my house in Queens, like leaving food for her in the hopes that she would eat it.

#4

My mother was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in 2002, after trying to starve herself to death. She started taking medication again, and started eating again, but not everything. She wanted to eat a bowl of fluffy white rice with saengtae jjigae, an old-fashioned stew of pollack and radishes laden with garlic and red pepper flakes.

#5

I remembered the earrings my mother had left for me, and wondered if she had overdosed or been hiding a serious illness. I put the little bundle in my backpack and felt a gut-wrenching feeling: she had known she was going to die.

#6

My mother was the youngest of four siblings. Half of her family had died by the time she was twenty, as Korea was a colony of Japan. The end of Japanese colonial rule in 1945 did not mean the end of occupied Korea, but rather a change