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 detailsâlanguage, 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 daughterâs search through intimate and global history for the roots of her motherâs schizophrenia. In her motherâs final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parentâs childhood in order to invite the past into the present and to hold space for her motherâs 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 herâbut also the things that kept her alive.