Sep 22

Sep 22 Crying in H Mart

Author: Michelle Zauner
Publisher: Knopf
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

TL;DR Review

Crying in H Mart is a beautifully written, deeply honest memoir. It will make you laugh, cry, and order Korean food.

For you if: You like books that make you hungry!

Full Review

“Hers was tougher than tough love. It was brutal, industrial-strength. A sinewy love that never gave way to an inch of weakness. It was a love that saw what was best for you ten steps ahead, and didn't care if it hurt like hell in the meantime. When I got hurt, she felt it so deeply, it was as though it were her own affliction. She was guilty only of caring too much. I realize this now, only in retrospect. No one in this world would ever love me as much as my mother, and she would never let me forget it.”

If you’re looking for your next great memoir, grab a copy of Crying in H Mart. It’s just plain good, with beautiful, astute, emotional writing from the heart (and stomach). I highly recommend the audiobook, which is read by the author herself.

The book is about Korean-American indie musician Michelle Zauner’s experience of losing her mother to cancer. We’re taken from her childhood and through her adolescence, the diagnosis, her mother’s death, and the grief afterward. And throughout, there is food — the food that showed love, that connected them to Korea and one another, that allowed her to begin to heal.

I think one of the great strengths of this memoir is its frankness; Zauner is unafraid to admit her uglier thoughts, moments, and actions in a way that is deeply human and relatable. She states things simply, with clarity, and with depth. Her writing is clear, compelling, engaging. Just so good.

How painful it must have been to relive these experiences to write them down. I take my hat off to you, Michelle.