A Daughter's Search To Understand Her Mother's Schizophrenia

Writer Grace M. Cho tells the story of her mother's descent into mental illness, and her own quest to understand her family's past. Cho emigrated to the U.S. as a baby with her Korean mother and American Merchant Marine father. Living in a small town in the northwest, Cho says they endured racist taunts, threats and assaults. After her mother developed symptoms of schizophrenia, Cho learned more about her mother's hardships growing up under Japanese occupation, through the Korean War, and afterward in a shattered Korean economy. Cho would learn her mother was likely a sex worker catering to American personnel stationed in Korea. Her mother's traumas, Cho believed, likely contributed to her mental illness. Her memoir is called, Tastes Like War.