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Outlook: Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history

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Grace M. Cho

01/11/2021 GMT

Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history

BBC World Service - Outlook, Cooking for my mother helped her share a hidden history

Grace M. Cho learned to cook traditional Korean food to comfort her traumatised mother

When Grace M. Cho’s mother developed schizophrenia, Grace found that traditional Korean cooking provided clues to her mother’s history – and helped them remain close.

Grace M. Cho grew up Korean-American in a small town in Washington state. Her mother, Koonja, was a Korean woman who met Grace’s white-American father – a merchant marine – on a US military base in the aftermath of the Korean war. Charismatic and determined, Koonja did everything she could to 'fit in' in their town: she threw a party for Grace and her brother’s teachers to help them integrate at school; she learned to cook American food; and she also founded a thriving woodland-foraging business that led to her being nicknamed “the blackberry lady” by the locals. Still, Grace never felt the family was truly accepted, and they often experienced harassment. When Grace was 15, Koonja suffered a psychological breakdown that would, years later, be diagnosed as schizophrenia. Struggling to help, Grace turned detective and uncovered her mother’s traumatic history in Korea. But it was through cooking – and recreating Korean recipes Koonja had not tasted for decades – that Grace and her mother were able to find comfort and connection. Grace's memoir is called Tastes Like War.
 
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com

Presenter: Anu Anand
Producer: Laura Thomas

Picture: Grace M. Cho
Credit: Patrick Bower

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