Tastes Like War: A Memoir

In 1998, Koonja moved to New Jersey at the same time that Cho began her doctorate at the City University of New York. As she set out to study her mother’s past as a sex worker, Cho felt that her mother was “becoming the flesh-and-blood shadow to my academic life” (228).

During this period, Cho worked as a Head Start director at a community center in Brooklyn. When two sisters in the program lost their father to a heart attack, Cho had the uncanny sensation that her own father had died, and dreamed of her father lying in a hospital. Cho later learned that her father died on the night that she dreamed of him. Cho felt numb to the news, having lived in expectation of it ever since his heart trouble began and also owing to the conflict between them. When Koonja tried to comfort her with an embrace, Cho recoiled because she was not ready to mourn her father. She later learned that her mother misunderstood this rebuttal, thinking that Cho rejected her because she was dirty.

Cho learned that her mother collectively named the voices in her head “Oakie” and believed that they were ethereal beings that grew on the trees of the house in Chehalis—the same trees that Koonja cut down. The voices both controlled Koonja’s actions and consoled her for her losses.

Cho continued to visit and cook for her mother, and her sister-in-law insisted that she come weekly, as this was the only food Koonja would eat apart from ramen. Koonja came to life during these cooking sessions, taking an interest in things such as Hungarian recipes and salsa dancing. However, Koonja held back from enjoying herself too much, as she believed that Oakie told her that moving in the wrong way would cause bad things to happen. As the cooking sessions continued, Koonja showed less concern about Oakie.

Cho’s research into voicework shows that hearing voices does not incorporate a conception of nonexistent people but is more like an ordinary inner dialogue. She also learns that people who hallucinate voices in the United States are more likely to hear violent messages, while those in other cultures, such as India, tend to hear pragmatic instructions concerning household chores.

When Cho’s brother moved Koonja to his studio flat in Tribeca, Cho was able to visit her more often. Koonja asked Cho for specific ingredients from the Korean market. When Cho returned and prepared the food, Koonja said that she now knew that Cho loved her. Koonja mistook events such as Cho accidentally sending her to jail when she was a teenager and rejecting her embrace following her father’s death as evidence that her daughter hated her.

Cho’s friend Hosu, a woman from the same part of Korea as her mother, becomes a confidante who understands the social forces that shaped Koonja’s life. Hosu tells Cho that Oakie “sounds just like Ok-hee” a popular name of their parents’ generation (239). Cho wonders whether the name represents another sister lost to her mother.

Around the time of Cho’s 30th birthday in January 2001, she moved in with her long-term partner Cesar in Jackson Heights, Queens. Cho felt that she had enough space to temporarily host Koonja while her brother undertook renovations on another place. Cesar was remarkably relaxed about Koonja occupying the room that was his music studio. Cho was relieved that her mother greeted Cesar with a handshake despite her dislike of meeting new people.

When Koonja refused to accompany Cho to the Korean market, Cho felt judged by the fishmonger for how she spoke Korean. As Cho ordered a mackerel with the head on, in the manner of a native Korean, she imagined that the fishmonger was taking in her mixed-race heritage and judging her as a “Western princess’s bastard” (247). She also felt deflated when she emerged from the market with sukat instead of the suk her mother requested, equating her nonfluency in Korean with an inability to prepare Korean food well. Cho followed her mother’s instructions to prepare the mackerel and the homemade soy milk for soup. Her mother stayed in the bedroom while Cho cooked. The meal was a success.

A few days later, Cho served her mother the soymilk over cereal, not realizing that the soymilk had expired. Koonja, under the mandate of Oakie, felt compelled to eat it. Triggered by the spoiled food, Koonja regressed “to the scavenging mentality of her days as a war survivor” and ate stale scraps, some of which came from the garbage (255).

After 9/11, Koonja resumed her hunger strikes.

Koonja’s hunger strikes led to her being admitted to the Princeton House psychiatric hospital two months after moving to the Queens apartment. After visiting her mother at the facility, Cho was astonished to find that Koonja had become sociable and charismatic. She had been given a new type of anti-psychotic drug which had fewer side effects and was benefiting from socialization and “being reminded that she was loveable” (259).

After one of her visits, Cho presented her PhD proposal. She explained her intention to analyze how the ghost of the sex worker servicing American troops haunts the Korean diaspora. Her research methods use the unconscious techniques of dream work, experimental writing, and performance. The committee, largely composed of white men, was shocked at the lack of quantitative methods and the reference to ghosts, even though this is normal in Asian American studies. After the meeting, the committee chair emailed Cho’s supervisor to express the opinion that Cho was not mentally strong enough for a PhD. Cho was incredulous, feeling that she had already spent ample time “thinking about misconceptions of madness and the silencing of women, and here was a white male professor suggesting that my place was not in academia but in the loony bin alongside my mother” (261).

After a conversation with her supervisor, Cho realized that she was the one keeping her mother in the psychiatric ward she went to discharge her the next day. On returning home, Koonja resumed her reclusive habits but accepted Cho’s food. When Cho started writing her dissertation in 2003, she began cooking Korean dishes which prompted her mother to tell stories about her past. When Cho asked Koonja about the Korean War, her mother offered up the memory of North Korean girl-soldiers. Cho later considers that this memory is likely a stand-in for more disturbing events.

One of the chapters in Cho’s dissertation examines how the specter of the camp-town sex worker haunts the art of diasporic Koreans. She analyses Nora Okja Keller’s novel Fox Girl, which features an older sex worker instructing a younger one to dissociate during her sexual experiences with American soldiers: “it’s not the real you. The real you flies away” (265). Cho wonders whether her mother had such a mentor and whether her name was Ok-hee. Cho was disturbed to discover that sex workers were viewed as disposable and that their bodies were not buried. Such images haunt Cho’s dreams and she too hears voices telling her to put the flesh back on bodies that have decomposed beyond recognition.

Following her return from the psychiatric home, Koonja embarked on the happiest period of her later life. She ate the food Cho prepared with appetite, instructing her according to her cravings. She requested Korean food that she had not eaten since childhood, realizing that she only just now craved it. Her request for a radish-based dish called saengtae jjigae was accompanied by instructions to reject the past cultural shame. For Cho, “her recipes were like incantations against a history of being rendered inferior” (270). Koonja never followed a recipe for saengtae jjigae, having memorized it from watching her mother cook. Cho later learns from her friend Hosu that Koonja’s preferences reflected Korean tastes from the 1950s and ’60s.

Planning a feast for Koonja’s 60th birthday, Cho assured her mother that there would be cheeseburgers, her favorite food, as well as Korean dishes. When Koonja sat at the table with Cho and Cesar, Cho felt that the woman who raised her was resurrected.

Koonja ordered a cheeseburger on her first date with Cho’s father at an American restaurant in the US naval camp. Following her move to America, the family began the tradition of a cheeseburger season every year when the weather was warm enough to grill. Cho’s research tells her that Koonja’s craving for American food likely began when she scavenged the dumpsters of the US naval base mess halls. Cho considers that for her mother the “cheeseburger was a complex symbol of survival and subordination, a luxury item that the Americans could afford to throw away while Koreans starved” and that “US imperialism seemed to be writ large on her unconscious, expressing itself through alimentary longings” (274). Equally however, Koonja’s ability to enjoy food enabled her to find relief from her trauma.

When Cho’s sister-in-law shared the subject of Cho’s research with Koonja, Cho assures Koonja that she wishes to remove the shame from her past and celebrate the heroism. Cho’s mother smiles faintly and gives her consent for the story to be published.

Although Cho cooked for Koonja for six years, on one occasion, Cho noticed that her mother appeared unwell and sensed that she would not be around for much longer. Although she was planning to leave Koonja after cooking for her, Cho changed her mind and stayed the night. They lay under a blanket together feeling the warmth from each other’s bodies.

After her mother’s death, Cho will think about these good times.