Tastes Like War by Grace M Cho

What does a war do to anyone who has tolerated it and came out with the life, and nothing else?

This is a memoir of Korean war and the story of a woman told by her own daughter. The woman who survived, thrived, and grew old in US and lived a secluded life suffering with schizophrenia.

There are a lot of symbols of war in the whole narrative but the strongest of them all is food. Food is one of the most basic needs of survival, and most of the war accounts are full of hunger. This one doesn't have a lot of hunger but you can see the signs of war in the food. A woman who doesn't talk much about the war she has seen at a very young age didn't forget the food. There were phases of self hunger but eventually it was the food that brought her out.

Even if one has never faced war, hunger, poverty or any kind of deprivation, it is not difficult to connect with the people who did. War takes the human out of humanity but it can't survive forever but it does leave one with the signs of war.

Peace