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Crying in H Mart: A Memoir Paperback – March 28, 2023

by Michelle Zauner (Author)

26,959 ratings

Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST

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.

From the Publisher

WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Review

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Time, NPR, Washington Post, Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Philadelphia Inquirer, Goodreads, BuzzFeed, and more • One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year • One of The Smithsonian's Ten Best Books About Food of the Year

“Michelle Zauner has written a book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music. She seamlessly blends stories of food and memory, sumptuousness and grief, to weave a complex narrative of loyalty and loss.” —Rachel Syme, New Yorker Writer

“I read Crying in H Mart with my heart in my throat. In this beautifully written memoir, Michelle Zauner has created a gripping, sensuous portrait of an indelible mother-daughter bond that hits all the notes: love, friction, loyalty, grief. All mothers and daughters will recognize themselves—and each other—in these pages.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance

“A warm and wholehearted work of literature, an honest and detailed account of grief over time, studded with moments of hope, humor, beauty, and clear-eyed observation. This story is a nuanced portrayal of a young person grappling with what it means to embody familial and cultural histories, to be fueled by creative pursuits, to examine complex relationships with place, and to endure the acute pain of losing a parent just on the other side of a tumultuous adolescence . . . Crying in H Mart is not to be missed.” —The Seattle Times

“A profound, timely exploration of terminal illness, culture and shared experience . . . Zauner has accomplished the unthinkable: a book that caters to all appetites. She brings dish after dish to life on the page in a rich broth of delectable details [and] offers remarkably prescient observations about otherness from the perspective of the Korean American experience. Crying in H Mart will thrill Japanese Breakfast fans and provide comfort to those in the throes of loss while brilliantly detailing the colorful panorama of Korean culture, traditions and food.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Crying in H Mart powerfully maps a complicated mother-daughter relationship . . . Zauner writes about her mother’s death [with] clear-eyed frankness . . . The book is a rare acknowledgement of the ravages of cancer in a culture obsessed with seeing it as an enemy that can be battled with hope and strength. Zauner plumbs the connections between food and identity . . . her food descriptions transport us to the table alongside her. What Crying in H Mart reveals is that in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself.” —NPR

“Zauner’s storytelling is impeccable. Memories are rendered with a rich immediacy, as if bathed in a golden light. Zauner is also adept at mapping the contradictions in her relationship with, and perception of, her mother. The healing, connective power of food reverberates in nearly every chapter of this coming-of-age story, [in] sensuous descriptions . . . Heartfelt, searching, wise.” —AV Club

"Crying in H Mart is a wonder: A beautiful, deeply moving coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, love and grief, food and identity. It blew me away, even as it broke my heart." –Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me

"The book’s descriptions of jjigae, tteokbokki, and other Korean delicacies stand out as tokens of the deep, all-encompassing love between Zauner and her mother . . . Zauner’s frankness around death feels like an unexpected yet deeply necessary gift."—Vogue

"A candid, moving tribute to her mother, to her identity, and to our collective desire for connection in this often alienating world...Zauner's writing is powerful in its straight-forwardness, though some turns of phrases are as beautiful as any song lyric... but it is her ability to convey how her mother's simple offering of a rice snack was actually an act of the truest love that leaves the most indelible impression."—Refinery 29

"Crying in H Mart is palpable in its grief and its tenderness, reminding us what we all stand to lose."—Vulture

"Incandescent."—Electric Lit

“Poignant . . . A tender, well-rendered, heart-wrenching account of the way food ties us to those who have passed. The author delivers mouthwatering descriptions of dishes like pajeon, jatjuk, and gimbap, and her storytelling is fluid, honest, and intimate. When a loved one dies, we search all of our senses for signs of their presence. Zauner’s ability to let us in through taste makes her book stand out—she makes us feel like we are in her mother’s kitchen, singing her praises.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Lyrical... Earnest... Zauner does a good job capturing the grief of losing a parent with pathos. Fans looking to get a glimpse into the inner life of this megawatt pop star will not be disappointed."—Publishers Weekly

About the Author

MICHELLE ZAUNER is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

18

Maangchi and Me

Whenever Mom had a dream about shit, she would buy a scratch card.

In the morning, on the drive to school, she’d pull wordlessly into the 7-Eleven parking lot and tell me to wait while she kept the car running.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, grabbing her purse from the back seat.

“What are you going to buy at the 7-Eleven?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Then she’d come back with a handful of scratch cards. We’d drive the last few blocks to school, and she’d scrub off the gummy film with a coin on the dashboard.

“You had a poop dream, didn’t you?”

“Umma won ten dollars!” she’d say. “I couldn’t tell you because then it doesn’t work!”

Dreams about pigs, the president, or shaking hands with a celebrity were all good-luck
dreams—but it was shit in particular, especially if you touched it, that was license to gamble.
Every time I had a dream about shit, I couldn’t wait to ask my mom to buy me a scratch card. I’d wake up from a dream about accidentally shitting my pants or walking into a public bathroom to find some extraordinarily long, winding shit, and when it was time to drive to school I’d sit quietly in the passenger seat, hardly able to contain myself until we were a block away from the
7-Eleven on Willamette Street.

“Mom, pull over,” I’d say. “I’ll tell you why later.”

Shortly after we returned to the States, I started having recurring dreams about my mother. I’d suffered one such episode before, when I was a paranoid kid, morbidly obsessed with my parents’ deaths. My father is driving us across Ferry Street Bridge and to skirt traffic up ahead, he maneuvers the car onto the shoulder, weaving through a gap under construction and aiming to vault off the bridge onto a platform below. Eyes focused on the mark, he leans in close to the steering wheel and accelerates, but we miss the landing by several feet. The car plunges into the rushing current of the Willamette River and I wake up breathing heavily.

Later, when we were teenagers, Nicole told me a story she’d heard from her mother about a woman who suffered from recurring nightmares that all revolved around the same car accident. The dreams were so vivid and traumatic that she sought a therapist to help her overcome them. “What if, after the accident, you try to get somewhere,” the therapist suggested. “Maybe if you try to get yourself to a hospital or some kind of safe place, the dream will reach a natural conclusion.” So each night the woman began to will herself out of the car and crawl further and further along the side of the highway. But the dream kept coming back. One day the woman really did get into a car accident and was supposedly found dragging herself across the asphalt in an attempt to reach some nebulous location, unable to distinguish reality from her lucid dreaming.

The dreams about my mother had small variations, but ultimately they were always the same. My mother would appear, still alive but incapacitated, left behind someplace we had forgotten her.

In one I’m alone, sitting on a well-manicured lawn on a warm, sunny day. In the distance I can see a dark and ominous glass house. It looks modern, the exterior made up entirely of black glass windows connected by silver steel frames. The building is wide, mansion-like, and sectioned off in squares, like several monochromatic Rubik’s Cubes stacked next to and on top of one another. I leave my patch of grass, making my way toward the curious house. I open its heavy door. Inside, it is dark and sparse. I wander around, eventually making my way toward the basement. I run my hand along the side of the wall as I descend the staircase. It is clean and quiet. I find my mother lying in the center of the room. Her eyes are closed and she is resting on some kind of platform that’s not quite a table but not a bed either, a kind of low pedestal, like the one where Snow White sleeps off the poisoned apple. When I reach her, my mother opens her eyes and smiles, as if she’s been waiting for me to find her. She is frail and bald, still sick but alive. At first I feel guilty—that we gave up on her too soon, that she’d been here the whole time. How had we managed to get so confused? Then I’m flooded with relief.

“We thought you were dead!” I say.

“I’ve just been here all along,” she says back to me.

I lay my head on her chest and she rests her hand on my head. I can smell her and feel her and everything seems so real. Even
though I know she is sick and we will have to lose her again, I’m just so happy to discover that she is alive. I tell her to wait for me. I need to run and get Dad! Then, just as I begin to ascend the stairs to find him, I wake up.

In another dream, she arrives at a rooftop dinner party and reveals she’s been living in the house next door all along. In another, I am walking around my parents’ property. I amble down a hill, skidding on the thick clay toward the man-made pond. In the field below, I discover my mother lying alone in a nightgown surrounded by lush grass and wildflowers. Relief again. How silly we were to think you were gone! How on earth did we manage to make such a monumental error? When you’re here you’re here you’re here!

Always she is bald and chapped and weak and I must carry her to bring her back into the house and show her to my father, but as soon as I bend down to scoop her into my arms, I wake up devastated. I shut my eyes immediately and try to crawl my way back to her. Drift back to sleep and return to the dream, savor just a bit more time in her presence. But I’m stuck wide awake or I fall into another dream entirely.

Was this my mother’s way of visiting me? Was she trying to tell me something? I felt foolish indulging in mysticism and so I kept the dreams hidden, privately analyzing their possible meanings. If dreams were hidden wishes, why couldn’t I dream of my mother the way I wanted? Why was it that whenever she appeared she was still sick, as if I could not remember her the way she’d been before? I wondered if my memory was stunted, if my dreams were consigned to the epoch of trauma, the image of my mother stuck where we had left off. Had I forgotten her when she was beautiful?

After the honeymoon, Peter and I posted up at his parents’ place in Bucks County. During the day we updated our résumés, applied for jobs, and looked at apartments online. I attacked these tasks with abandon. I’d essentially spent the last year as an unpaid nurse and cleaner, and the five years before that failing to make it as a musician. I needed to commit myself to some kind of career as soon as possible.

I applied indiscriminately to what seemed like every available office job in New York City and messaged everyone I knew in search of potential leads. By the end of the first week I was hired as a sales assistant for an advertising company in Williamsburg. They had long-term leases on nearly a hundred walls around Brooklyn and Manhattan, and an in-house art department that hand-painted mural advertisements like they did in the fifties. My job was to assist the two main account reps, helping them sell walls to prospective clients. If we were going after a yoga clothing company, I created maps that pinpointed every Vinyasa studio and organic health food store within a five-block radius. If we were pitching to a skate shoe company, I charted skate parks and concert venues to determine which of our walls in Brooklyn men between eighteen and thirty were most likely to pass by. My salary was forty-five grand a year with benefits. I felt like a millionaire.

We rented a railroad apartment in Greenpoint from an old Polish woman who’d acquired half her husband’s real estate in their divorce. The kitchen was small, with little counter space, and the floor was peel-and-stick checkerboard vinyl. There was no sink in the bathroom, just a large farmhouse-style sink in the kitchen that pulled double duty.

For the most part, I felt very well adjusted. Everything was so unfamiliar—a new big city to live in, a real grown-up job. I tried my best not to dwell on what could not be changed and to throw myself into productivity, but every so often I was plagued by flashbacks. Painful loops would flare up, bringing every memory I had hoped to repress inescapably to the forefront of my mind.
Images of my mother’s white, milky tongue, the purple bedsores, her heavy head slipping from my hands, her eyes falling open. An internal scream, ricocheting off the walls of my chest cavity, ripping through my body without release.

I tried therapy. Once a week after work I took the L train to Union Square and attempted to explain what I was feeling, though generally I was unable to take my mind off the ticking clock until half an hour in, when time was already up. Then I’d take the train back to Bedford Avenue and walk the half hour back to our apartment. It was hardly therapeutic and seemed just to exhaust me even more. Nothing my therapist said was anything I hadn’t psychoanalyzed in myself a million times already anyway. I was paying a hundred-dollar copay per session, and I began to think it would be much more fulfilling to just take myself out for a fifty-dollar lunch twice a week. I canceled the rest of my sessions and committed myself to exploring alternative forms of self-care.

I decided to turn to a familiar friend—Maangchi, the YouTube vlogger who had taught me how to cook doenjang jjigae and jatjuk in my time of need. Each day after work, I prepared a new recipe from her catalog. Sometimes, I followed her step by step, carefully measuring, pausing, and rewinding to get it exactly right. Other times, I picked a dish, refamiliarized myself with the ingredients, and let the video play in the background as my hands and taste buds took over from memory.

Every dish I cooked exhumed a memory. Every scent and taste brought me back for a moment to an unravaged home. Knife-cut noodles in chicken broth took me back to lunch at Myeongdong Gyoja after an afternoon of shopping, the line so long it filled a flight of stairs, extended out the door, and wrapped around the building. The kalguksu so dense from the rich beef stock and starchy noodles it was nearly gelatinous. My mother ordering more and more refills of their famously garlic- heavy kimchi. My aunt scolding her for blowing her nose in public.

Crispy Korean fried chicken conjured bachelor nights with Eunmi. Licking oil from our fingers as we chewed on the crispy skin, cleansing our palates with draft beer and white radish cubes as she helped me with my Korean homework. Black- bean noodles summoned Halmoni slurping jjajangmyeon takeout, huddled around a low table in the living room with the rest of my Korean family.

I drained an entire bottle of oil into my Dutch oven and deep- fried pork cutlets dredged in flour, egg, and panko for tonkotsu, a Japanese dish my mother used to pack in my lunch boxes. I spent hours squeezing the water from boiled bean sprouts and tofu and spooning filling into soft, thin dumpling skins, pinching the tops closed, each one slightly closer to one of Maangchi’s perfectly uniform mandu.

Maangchi peeled the skin off an Asian pear with the giant knife pulled toward her, just like Mom did when she cut Fuji apples for me after school on a little red cutting board, before eating the left-over fruit from the core. Just like Mom, chopsticks in one hand, scissors in the other, cutting galbi and cold naengmyeon noodles with a specifically Korean ambidextrous precision. Skillfully stretching out the meat with her right hand and cutting it into bite-sized pieces with her left, using kitchen scissors like a warrior brandishes a weapon.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (March 28, 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1984898957
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984898951
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.16 x 0.72 x 7.96 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Asian & Asian American Biographies
- #5 in Culinary Biographies & Memoirs
- #6 in Grief & Bereavement

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Michelle Zauner

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MICHELLE ZAUNER is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017). Her forthcoming album Jubilee will be released in June 2021. Her first book is Crying in H Mart, out now.

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Customers find this memoir touching and relatable, with brilliant, lyrical writing that moves them to tears. The book explores a mother-daughter relationship in depth and provides insight into Korean culture through its focus on food. Customers describe it as an emotional yet addicting read that is incredibly cathartic, with one customer noting how it captures experiences using all of the senses.

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Readability Writing quality Heartbreaking Mother-daughter relationship Cultural aspects Food knowledge Heartwarming Pacing

246 customers mention "Readability"243 positive3 negative

Customers find the memoir highly readable, describing it as a fantastic and touching account that is very relatable.

"...Overall this is a remarkable book about a very human experience that many will face in some form or another when they lose someone vital to their..." Read more

"...excessively edited--it is like a perfectly engineered, scientifically-paced Hollywood story: there is the punchline at the end of each chapter..." Read more

"...no idea just how much I needed to read this emotionally raw and poignant memoir...." Read more

"Loved it! Touching, sad and inspiring really. It was easy to connect with and it’s relatable in so many ways to so many people...." Read more

148 customers mention "Writing quality"121 positive27 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, describing it as brilliant, lyrical, and easy to read.

"...I’ve never heard of most of the dishes she described in lush and mouthwatering detail but now I want to find the nearest Korean restaurant and dive..." Read more

"...The text is extremely fluid, moving from the main plot involving Michelle's mother to flashbacks of her childhood and adolescence in a very logical..." Read more

"...Her prose is so lyrical that I found myself flipping back to the cover in oder to make sure I was indeed reading a memoir...." Read more

"...This is mainly due to Zauner’s effective narration as we learn about the raw bond that Zauner and her mom had...." Read more

123 customers mention "Heartbreaking"109 positive14 negative

Customers describe this memoir as heart-wrenching and emotional, describing it as a fantastic exploration of grief through an intimate and moving relationship narrative.

"...It is intimate, sincere, funny and sad, bittersweet, generously emotional...." Read more

"...I had absolutely no idea just how much I needed to read this emotionally raw and poignant memoir...." Read more

"Loved it! Touching, sad and inspiring really. It was easy to connect with and it’s relatable in so many ways to so many people...." Read more

"...There are moments of gut-wrenching honesty, where the pain is palpable and devastating...." Read more

62 customers mention "Mother-daughter relationship"62 positive0 negative

Customers praise the memoir's exploration of the mother-daughter relationship, describing it as a beautiful and touching account of a young woman's journey from childhood to adulthood, with one customer noting how it helped them connect with their own mother.

"...Michelle’s deep love for her mom and how she waded through the months of watching her mother fade and deteriorate struck a deep chord in me...." Read more

"...It is a true life reminder that the transformative power of love exceeds the human capacity to demonstrate it in mortal ways...." Read more

"...niche audience book but it touches and connects people through memory, love, loss and grief for their loved ones...." Read more

"...It was great to see the growth in main character." Read more

59 customers mention "Cultural aspects"59 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's cultural elements, particularly its insight into Korean culture, and one customer mentions how it connects readers to their heritage through food.

"...This is a great book to explore death, culture, food and the power of the mother-daughter relationship." Read more

"Enjoyable book that gave me a good perspective on Korean culture. It was great to see the growth in main character." Read more

"...What you get with this book is a memoir about a Korean American girl, growing up in Eugene, Oregon and trying to find her identity...." Read more

"...She also showed Korean cultures in detail, which astonished me who is Korean." Read more

55 customers mention "Food knowledge"51 positive4 negative

Customers appreciate the book's focus on food, noting its great insight into Korean cuisine and how it serves as a love language.

"...This is a great book to explore death, culture, food and the power of the mother-daughter relationship." Read more

"...At the same time, it is also a gastronomic trip: Michelle meticulously uses traditional Korean food to connect and reconnect with her mother and her..." Read more

"...It’s clear that food is where she finds solace, and those passages are some of the most evocative and moving...." Read more

"...This book touches a lot on the cultural differences, food differences, and is raw and emotional...." Read more

48 customers mention "Heartwarming"48 positive0 negative

Customers find the book heartwarming and incredibly cathartic, making them smile and offering joy.

"...in particular where she goes all little off that script and gives some food for thought when she intertwines the relationship between kimchi and..." Read more

"...Her words are all necessary and cathartic for those who have ever served as care-givers for a treminally ill person...." Read more

"...This book touches a lot on the cultural differences, food differences, and is raw and emotional...." Read more

"...This memoir style was unique and refreshing and this book is definitely one that I will hold onto for life." Read more

30 customers mention "Pacing"27 positive3 negative

Customers find the pacing of the memoir moving and emotional, with one customer noting how it captures experiences using all of the senses.

"...and causing a shiver to run up your spine, there's the perfect pacing from funny and comfy moments to describing delicious Korean food and then back..." Read more

"...touches a lot on the cultural differences, food differences, and is raw and emotional...." Read more

"...I thought this book was a niche audience book but it touches and connects people through memory, love, loss and grief for their loved ones...." Read more

"...heartfelt story that touches on family, identity, and culture in such a moving way...." Read more

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Beth Deese
Warning: Do not read while hungry!
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2023
Verified Purchase

If you aren’t hungry when you pick up this book, you soon will be. Zauner describes Korean food with the passion of a zealot! I’ve never heard of most of the dishes she described in lush and mouthwatering detail but now I want to find the nearest Korean restaurant and dive in. I want to try all the different flavors of kimchi!

I loved so many things about this book, truly. I think I read it too fast and I already want a re-read. I lost my own mom to cancer at 22, such a tender age when you are just getting past all the teenage moodiness and resentment towards your mother and begin finding yourself in her and building a relationship again. Michelle’s deep love for her mom and how she waded through the months of watching her mother fade and deteriorate struck a deep chord in me. It was hard to read but powerful and vital.

I loved how vulnerable and honest this memoir was. It wasn’t preachy or given to justifying or explaining death. Michelle just told the story with straightforward and direct words that highlighted the realness of her experience and mostly lets you do your own interpreting of what it all means. I do love one section in particular where she goes all little off that script and gives some food for thought when she intertwines the relationship between kimchi and death, describing how cabbage could rot into nothing but with the right ingredients, the rotting process turns into a delicious dish that is integral to Korean culture. She chose to find the beauty in her mother’s death and instead of letting it rot, instead become a source of healing and sustenance.

Overall this is a remarkable book about a very human experience that many will face in some form or another when they lose someone vital to their life. Michelle told her story with raw candor and the added depth of her mixed heritage and love of Korean food that bound her to her mother was so compelling that I read the whole book in a day! This is a great book to explore death, culture, food and the power of the mother-daughter relationship.

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Regis
Found in Translation
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2024
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Philip Roth opens his memoir Patrimony: A True Story with a long and detailed description of his father's health that sets the stage for what is about to come: "My father had lost most of the sight in his right eye by the time he'd reached eighty-six, but otherwise he seemed in phenomenal health for a man of his age when he came down with what the Florida doctor diagnosed, incorrectly, as Bell's palsy, a viral infection that causes paralysis, usually temporary, to one side of the face." Michelle Zauner does the same, but in a much more concise way: "Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart." They are different, but they are the same: they are sparked by pain and suffering, they pay their respects to the ones who have gone and are missed, and they intensely connect with their roots, Jewish and Korean, respectively. And through them, Philip Roth and Michelle Zauner strive to heal their pain, using writing as therapy, no matter how different their success in that endeavor may have been.

Michelle Zauner's writing may not be as ornamented as Philip Roth's, but her book is a treat all the same. Crying in H Mart is like listening to a candid confession from a close friend late at night, when everybody else has already left and you stay with her, a glass of wine and many stories. It is intimate, sincere, funny and sad, bittersweet, generously emotional. At the same time, it is also a gastronomic trip: Michelle meticulously uses traditional Korean food to connect and reconnect with her mother and her mother's relatives in Korea, and some descriptions of dishes, ingredients and dish preparations are as detailed as in a recipe book with mouth-watering pictures. There is even an almost literal transcription of one of Maangchi's tutorial videos, specifically the one where she prepares soothing jatjuk. By doing that, I think Michelle also tried to find roots in Asian references: take the Studio Ghibli movies with their beautiful scenes of food preparation, the importance of food in Haruki Murakami's novels or Bong Joon-Ho's movies. From my part, I am now a Maangchi fan.

The text is extremely fluid, moving from the main plot involving Michelle's mother to flashbacks of her childhood and adolescence in a very logical and well-connected way. Up to mid-book (when the main plot sort of resolves itself), the text is so thought-of that it even sounds excessively edited--it is like a perfectly engineered, scientifically-paced Hollywood story: there is the punchline at the end of each chapter making reference to an idea cited before and causing a shiver to run up your spine, there's the perfect pacing from funny and comfy moments to describing delicious Korean food and then back to dramatic scenes, there is suspense and plot twists, all smooth and seamless. The last half of the book loses some of its stamina (except for a poignant scene at her parents-in-law's house in Bucks County, all Cinema Paradiso-like), but it is still charming, lyrical and beautiful.

Philip Roth concludes his memoir concisely and in a rather bitter tone, with a short and dry sentence: "You must not forget anything." Michele grants us with a fluid, energetic and dreamlike last scene in a karaoke (noraebang), whose atmosphere made me think of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanson in the karaoke scene in Lost in Translation, a strange simultaneous state of happiness and sadness. Indeed, this book is a testimony of Michelle's own "finding herself in translation", a funny feeling of being awkwardly out of context but even so pertaining, which is why this book seems to have resonated so much with many mixed-race children. Michelle trying her best to sing along Pearl Sister's Coffee Hanjan with her aunt Nami is indeed a beautiful image to conclude and summarize her search for her own identity by not denying but strengthening her Korean roots.

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Jill Crossland
More than a memoir
Reviewed in Canada on October 25, 2023
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Vogue calls this book 'deeply necessary'; I raise that and also call it long overdue. Crying in H Mart doesn't use the over-analyzing, ponderous prose that so many books about cancer and death do; instead, it is refreshingly modern. Zauner skillfully takes us through her mother's diagnosis, the stages of her cancer and her eventual death. But she never loses touch with herself or gets swallowed whole by it all; instead, she somehow manages to grow personally and professionally.

While death is one of the worst things we face, it doesn't have to be all-consuming. Zauner channelled so many emotions as she prepared the meals of her Korean heritage and, in turn, shared this with her readers through a lyrical writing style.

We also learn about her fascinating extended family, fraught relationship with her father, rise as an indie rock musician, and the founding of Japanese Breakfast. Still, somehow, the book never overwhelms the reader.

Every culture deals with grief differently. People generalize that Europeans, particularly the British, are cold, especially in times of extreme sadness; this is far from true. There is nothing wrong with the fact that many of us grieve privately over a cup of tea and Peak Freans biscuits, but I will admit that might not be the copy for a good memoir.

Crying in H Mart holds nothing back, so if you are going through someone's cancer battle or are still raw from a recent death, this might not be the best book for you, but when you are ready, Zauner's words will bring some pain, some laughter, some soul searching and in the end like the author you will emerge stronger.

Michelle Zauner wanted 'to make the ordinary beautiful', and she succeeded.

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Cols
One of the best books I've read this year
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2024
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This is a great memoir. It's very personal and makes us think about our own family we have lost. The reference to Korean food is also brilliant and I can't wait to go to a Korean restaurant and maybe try kimchi.

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anum
Disappointed
Reviewed in Saudi Arabia on February 20, 2025
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The book wasn't in the best condition

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Marcus Bastos Santos
ok!
Reviewed in Brazil on October 29, 2024
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Se você gosta de ler memórias, esse livro pode ser o certo para você.

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Ana Jaime
Una historia conmovedora
Reviewed in Mexico on August 25, 2024
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Excelente libro muy sensorial a los aromas y sabores

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5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: Do not read while hungry!

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5.0 out of 5 stars More than a memoir

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Warning: Do not read while hungry!

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Una historia conmovedora