From communism to democracy, from the sixties to the modern day, from the smallest villages to the largest cities, from film to real life, Its a Long Way from China to Hollywood travels halfway around the world and shares the life story of Grace Yang. In this memoir, Yang narrates the story of her journey and the events that molded her lifefrom her birth in China in 1964, living under the Communist rule of Mao Zedong, growing up with her parents as an only child, immigrating to America, and coordinating a successful entertainment career. From her school days to her friends, to her marriage and daughters birth, she provides a glimpse of life in China and the many differences between it and life in the United States. A story of life on two continents and in two different cultures, Its a Long Way from China to Hollywood communicates the trials and tribulations of one familys struggle to obtain an unimaginable dream. It shows how immigration has become a phenomenal part of our civilization that merges humanity through many generations.
Finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Winner of the 2022 Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature A TIME and NPR Best Book of the Year in 2021 This evocative memoir of food and family history is "somehow both mouthwatering and heartbreaking... [and] a potent personal history" (Shelf Awareness). Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life. Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive. “An exquisite commemoration and a potent reclamation.” —Booklist (starred review) “A wrenching, powerful account of the long-term effects of the immigrant experience.” —Kirkus Reviews
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