About this virtual town hall discussion
Watch the recording of this event below:
As part of the CUNY GC Great Read program for Fall 2022 semester, we invite CUNY Graduate Center students, faculty and staff to read and explore Grace M. Cho’s acclaimed memoir Tastes Like War,
a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award. We will discuss the book’s
key themes about heritage and history, intergenerational trauma and
mental illness, immigration and racism, and the connective potential of
food to explore a mother’s fractured past. This virtual conversation
around these themes and the essential questions brought up by the book
will be facilitated by distinguished scholars and educators Rose M. Kim, Jean Halley and Prince Cunningham,
followed by a town hall style discussion in which students come
together to share their thoughts and interpretations of the text to
understand it in broader contexts.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT
For this event, and as part of the #CUNYGCGreatRead ongoing discussion this semester, we will be asking questions inspired by the book for you to bring your own ideas, experiences, and research to explore and think through together. Here are some questions from our facilitators to help guide and frame our interdisciplinary discussion:
- How does Tastes Like War help us to rethink scholarship as an avenue for exploring personal/family history?
- What is the role of grief/mourning and survival/pride/celebration in this work?
- In what ways is Grace M Cho's Tastes Like War a stunning example of feminist research methodology?
- How does Cho's Tastes Like War refuse the all-too-common memoir practice of attempting to understand the personal without locating individual lives, individual traumas in the social?
- How might an awareness of trauma transform our understanding of social interactions and/or society itself?
- How do the experiences of Grace’s mother help us to rethink prevailing ideas about normality and physical/mental illness, as well as the relationship between mind and body, the self and the environment?
FOR CUNY GC COMMUNITY: CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE FREE EBOOK VIA THE CUNY GC LIBRARY.
Click here for more information about the CUNY GC Great Read program, including programming, and how to get and read a copy of the book, including FREE e-book access for GC community with video tutorials from the GC Library, and ANYONE can use GREATREAD20 for 20% off the print copy of the book Tastes Like War on the Feminist Press website here until 2023.
This event and the CUNY GC Great Read program is organized and presented by the Center for the Humanities, the Feminist Press, and the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center with support from the GC Library.
