作者的家人在书出版大约半年后，指控作者在书中多处描述并不属实，属于编造，例如对韩国的记忆（作者一岁就去了美国）、家庭的经济状况（家有奔驰凯迪拉克）、故乡俄勒冈小镇上唯一的亚裔家庭（有普查数据显示他们甚至并不是唯一的韩裔）等等。在网上快速搜了一下，没看到作者的回应。
我没看过这本书，以后可能也不会看。对双方不做任何评判，只是偶然看到，转帖过来以供参考。
I am the brother depicted in this “memoir”, which I believe should be considered fiction. As a fiercely private individual with zero interest in publicity, I’m writing this review with a heavy heart. My sister did not bother to ask any of her living relatives who lived with and cared for my mother whether our memories matched hers and did not care about invading my family’s privacy with a greatly exaggerated, bordering on the ridiculous version of my life. If she believed her memoir to be accurate, why was she afraid to share it with us for consent and corroboration, which is basic common sense and courtesy, not to mention legality, required of any memoir? As for further nuance, I will restate a comment from another reader’s review, as it captures the essence of Grace M. Cho: “Cho seems to be trying to build a story of herself as a victim which I find disgusting.” As her brother, I can sadly attest she’s been doing this her whole life and the only thing she is a victim of is her own dishonesty.
Grace may ethnically be half Korean, but she immigrated as a baby at age 1 (she didn’t speak a lick of Korean and her English was without an accent) and enjoyed the trappings of an upper middle class upbringing (piano lessons, tennis lessons, academic support, college guidance). She had free access to my parents’ Mercedes and Cadillacs, spent a couple of her high school summers in Paris, Corsica, studied abroad in Cambridge and later in college, in Brazil. I can’t recall her ever having to work and if she did (as one of her hs friends pointed out) it was out of choice and not necessity, as my parents funded her every want – Ivy League educations, spending money, even large annual checks as an adult. Heck, even the down payment for her first home purchase which she portrayed as having to save and scrape so hard for in the book came from her previous partner’s mother and … me. We weren’t wealthy, but by middle class Chehalis standards, we were well off, as any classmate can confirm. My point is that my parents sacrificed to give her everything any child could ever want. Yet, she always felt she was some type of a victim and this book is a new low. Truth blows her narrative of immigrant struggle.
The Chehalis I grew up in was not the xenophobic back water she portrayed. She cites a KKK rally in 1924 yet fails to provide the proper context that during that era, the KKK was endemic in Washington state and Seattle and many, many other cities also hosted such rallies. Chehalis is a 1.5 hour drive in either direction to cosmopolitan Seattle or Portland. The 1980 census (she would have been 9) shows 17 Koreans (and 37 Asians), not our family being the only 3 (ch 3 literally headlines with this ridiculous claim) and the town not having seen immigrants “in several decades” which was a major premise of her book and in her numerous interviews found online. If you also count Centralia (and you should, as the two towns are basically connected), the community had 44 Koreans. Plus Olympia, the state capitol, was a mere 30 minutes up I-5 with another 87 Koreans as well as many other Asian immigrants. Most of my mother’s friends were other Korean immigrants from Olympia, and one family from Tacoma (an hours drive). This is the west coast we’re talking about. Yes, there was some racism as you’d find in any community but I encountered far more caring, hard working people who gave me the support and encouragement to make something of myself without resorting to fraud. Truth blows her narrative of isolation.
I did not consider my father to be racist, but more of a man of his generation (he was born in 1919). When he occasionally said inappropriate things, and when I told him how uncomfortable it made me feel, he never said them again. He taught me to be respectful to everyone and to be tolerant of others. As for the contributing to the David Duke campaign story, I don’t know, but can see how it might have happened. He was at the end of his life and was vulnerable to grifters and people asking for money. For example, the grifting therapist story – I was the one who caught wind of it, flew across the country, threatened the therapist with censure and convinced my father to instead donate his money to charity. My sister was totally uninvolved – merely heard about that story from me (stealing my memories and passing them off as hers is a recurring theme throughout the book – even the title of the book was stolen from a story my mother told my wife, and relayed to Grace). My father was a good man and I’m proud to have been raised by him. Truth muddles her allegations of racism.
There was no domestic abuse. This is a fantastic lie. My father never laid a hand on anyone. It’s not who he was, let alone her vivid description of hearing the “cracking sound of bone”of my mother’s nose, when Grace was supposedly 2 or 3 years old. What two and a half year old would retain memory in such detail, besides I would have been nine and have no such memory and would have certainly noticed the bruises and black eyes that a crushed nose would have caused (edit: I mistakenly said 1.5 in an earlier draft, as I was going off memory of her book – still ridiculous, and I still have no memory of this event). I was mysteriously absent in the domestic abuse scenes. Either I was the most oblivious person on the planet … or Grace lied to further her portrayal as a victim. Seriously, ask yourself whether you believe the author has set a new neuroscience bar for early memory AND that I was so clueless as a nine year old that I never noticed violent, bone breaking fights, OR did the author just make this stuff up to sensationalize this book because trauma sells? The truth is either one or the other, not the “differing perspectives” nonsense her friends and likely paid bots and trolls have been harassing me with on twitter and Goodreads. The notion of neutral, independent readers using their valuable time to pick fights and harass me to try to convince me that my life wasn’t the way I lived it when the preponderance of evidence and common sense indicates otherwise, just doesn’t ring true to me. Truth blows her narrative of abuse.
My father also did not bring home prostitutes while my mother was home – I’m certain I would have noticed something this outrageous, or at least heard about it. Unlike Grace, I was close to both parents and spoke with one or both of them nearly every day. Prostitutes in Chehalis during the pre-internet era? Come on. My mother would have killed him, had this story been true. My father also did not expose himself to my daughter. I was literally in the room during the incident she describes – my father, at the end of his life, didn’t quite make it to the bathroom on time and accidentally pooped his pants and only Grace could grotesquely turn an elder’s bathroom accident into a story of sexual exposure. My daughter (now an adult) was outraged – “who says something like this!” after reading that passage. Someone with a narrative as a victim, that’s who. Our life was pretty boring … and dare I say, normal. She destroyed his legacy solely to add a sensational element to the story to sell books, but truth blows her narrative of sensationalism.
She is no mental health expert, unless you consider what she might have read in books with no real life experience, “expertise”. She was uninvolved in my mother’s health care. She never accompanied her to doctors’ appointments like my wife and I did for decades and she couldn’t even be bothered to visit after my mother’s suicide attempts. The story about single-handedly diagnosing her with schizophrenia from a library book at age 15 while my father and I denied there was a problem? She may actually believe she did but I first noticed my mother was off the summer before I left for college (Grace was 11) which was several years before that story and my father and I consulted and subsequently took her to doctors in Seattle. Like many brain illnesses, getting a proper diagnosis was difficult and they evolved over time (schizophrenia, PTSD, anxiety disorder, depression, TBI from a fall from the roof). Her prominent psychiatrist in Princeton who she saw for many years told me after her death that it was his belief that she most likely didn’t have schizophrenia but that more likely a stroke had altered her brain functioning. He apparently tried to get a brain scan as technology had advanced so much since the onset of her condition but my mother refused to do so. We just tried to give her the most comfortable and secure life possible. Regardless of what she had, there was ZERO shame for us, and we certainly didn’t refer to her with the horrible, ableist terms with which she described my mother. My wife and I both participate in and volunteer at mental health advocacy groups – does this sound like we’re ashamed of having had a mad relative to you? To us, she was just “mom” or “grandma”. My kids hardly even noticed she was that different from other grandmas and my mother was not at all as described in the book, shades drawn, unable to care for herself. My mother cooked weekly feasts for us, played with my kids, with my dogs. That description was awful and totally inaccurate. Truth blows her narrative of mental health expertise.
Grace breached ethical and moral boundaries in interviewing a vulnerable subject -my mother – against her will. This is taboo for academics and there are prohibitions against interviewing vulnerable subjects for academic research. To put my mother’s life in proper perspective, she was born in a Japanese concentration camp during WW2 and was a refugee during the Korean War, where she lost half her family. I can’t fathom the horrible things she had to endure, yet she survived, and somehow had the fortitude to bring me to America and allow me to live the American Dream. Any topic regarding her traumatic background – she would never discuss, including with Grace. She has no proof my mother was a sex worker, merely speculation. She says in an interview that a relative told her at age 22. That relative she’s referring to is my wife, who says she never did. I suppose this speculation could hold for practically every Asian bride during that era. Was every Asian bride a sex worker? Of course not, and who is she to label my mother as a sex worker without even knowing if she was one? Even if it were true, I also would have ZERO shame. It would just add to the lore of this remarkable woman who sacrificed and overcame impossible odds to give her children everything they could possibly want. Also, my father was never in the service (he captained a freightliner). However, Grace was hell bent on willing the serviceman meets camp town girl narrative to life – truth and my mother’s health be damned. I found her interrogation of my mother against her will at the end of her life to be disgraceful, morally corrupt and ethically compromised. My disagreement and eventual estrangement from my sister was due to this topic – her interrogation of my mother (against her will) for her first book. My mother was so disturbed by this, she asked me to take Grace out of the will (I refused, as I was still the dutiful big brother, protecting her at that time). We weren’t even aware she was writing this follow up book, which she calls a “memoir”. Truth blows her narrative of legitimate scholarship.
Contrary to her portrayal as my mother’s cook, Grace couldn’t be bothered to help care for my mother (or for my father at the end of his life). Cooking is one thing my mother never struggled with – she cooked for herself and for her family throughout her life, even during her low periods and she cooked me a wonderful meal a mere two days before her death. With the exception of a 6 month period when I was building a specialized custom home (“the apartment”) for my mother in my back yard at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars (Grace contributed $0.00), she was no more than a bit player during the ~ 20 years my mother was under my care. Since cooking is a big theme of her book, a generous accounting in Grace’s favor was that she cooked no more than 1% of my mother’s meals and she only showed up at the very end – once every few weeks – during the last year of my mother’s life under the guise of cooking but in reality, to mine her for info for her first book. No, my sister was not there for my mother. The following story pretty much says it all – when my mother was hospitalized following a suicide attempt, I was out of town and with my wife at her side, 8 months pregnant and a toddler in tow and and when she called Grace from the ER to plead for help (she was merely 1 hour and 40 minute commute away – the hardship she describes in the book about commuting from NYC to Princeton makes me LOL), her response was “what do you expect me to do, change my life for you?” She did not come to help DESPITE HER OWN MOTHER BEING HOSPITALIZED FOLLOWING A SUICIDE ATTEMPT. So we changed our lives to provide full time care for my beloved mother. My wife literally sacrificed her career and gave up her PhD studies at Princeton University and I declined career advancements which would have required moving. Truth blows her narrative of care.
We changed our lives but we’re not the least bit bitter about that. However, my sister is now spinning a ridiculously false and sensational narrative of our family and my mother’s care and selling this “memoir” to tabloids and breaching our privacy without our consent. Ask yourself how you would feel if you were in my position. For me, every reference to this book feels like a dagger to my heart. I can go on and on to refute her numerous lies and extreme exaggeration- so much so that my wife has written a 63 page mirror memoir which refutes Grace’s book. We’re willing to state all this in a court of law, and can back up our statements with witnesses. Grace loves to be portrayed as a victim, but the true victims are the legacies of my parents. They were good people and did not deserve this.
Tastes Like War is not a memoir. It belongs in fiction, and it Tastes Like Lies.
UPDATE: since the rest of the family first went public with our unanimous objections to this book on October 31, 2021, there’s been a noticeable difference in her interview responses -now far less sure that my mother “may have been a sex worker”, she now grew up middle class vs poverty, we are no longer the first immigrants the town had seen in decades, etc. So why would you believe any of her story? This book is fiction and enjoy it in that light if you want, but do not try to convince me that I am embarrassing myself (nothing regarding my life/my mother’s care is embarrassing to me) or that I merely have different perspectives (yeah, right). If you feel anger toward me for telling you this memoir is fiction, I’d instead respectfully ask you to do your own due diligence on this topic (because her publisher certainly didn’t do any) and then when it becomes obvious that she told a fairy tale, that you instead direct your anger at the party who took your money and wasted your time under false pretenses.