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.Black-and-white photograph.
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Based on the viral 2018 New Yorker essay of the same name, this debut by Zauner is an exceptionally vivid memoir that deftly explores the complex relationships between culture and family, mothers and daughters. The details of Zauner's mother's illness and death, as well as their devastating impact on the author, make for gut-wrenching reading, but it's hard to put this book down. The author holds nothing back as she navigates her adolescent search to understand her identity, made more complex by her biracial background. She's particularly open about her evolving relationship with her mother. Much of the book follows her mother's cancer diagnosis and Zauner's efforts to care for her. Threaded throughout the narrative are musings on food and culture, and the role of food in helping us to build connections and memories-however difficult at times- with family. The details and cultural references here are particular to Zauner's life, but her account contains so many all-too-common experiences of grief and endurance that it will resonate with just about everyone. VERDICT Zauner has created a memoir that is distinctly her own, but it will leave a mark on anyone who reads it-a mark that will not soon be forgotten.-Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell