Book Review - Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Title: Crying in H Mart
Author: Michelle Zauner
Genre: Non-Fiction/ Memoir
Published: 2021
 
Description: In this 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 the only Asian-American kid 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, performing gigs with her fledging band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel even more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.
 
It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic 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.
 
Review: In her memoir “Crying in H Mart”, Michelle Zauner, the singer-songwriter behind Japanese Breakfast, takes the reader through a painful process of loss and self-discovery. The result is an honest, sometimes heartbreaking book that celebrates the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship through the lens of Korean cuisine.
 
The supermarket chain H Mart serves as a sanctuary where memories of her mother are linked to the smell of fermented soybeans and the texture of rice cakes. For anyone who shares a culture though cuisine, this book will feel like a warm embrace. Michelle’s search for her Korean identity after her mother’s death is sincere and moving, raw and unfiltered.
 
Zauner does not spare herself or her mother. She describes their difficult relationship, full of misunderstanding and high expectations. Her mother’s physical decline due to her cancer is also described without embellishments. This makes the book heavy. It’s not a polished story about saying goodbye, but a reflection of the messy reality of death.
 
After the strong opening and impressive description of the period of illness, the story sometimes loses momentum in the middle section. The detailed lists of ingredients and cooking processes are a delight for lovers of Korean cuisine, but to me it felt repetitive and took the momentum out of the emotional story. In addition, her relationship with her father remains relatively underexposed.
 
“Crying in H Mart” is a beautiful book about grief, mourning, family, food and culture.
 
Rating: 3,5/ 5