Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Memoir written by musician, about her relationship with her mother. Complex ultimately satisfying. Having lived in South Korea, for a couple years, helped me to comprehend the food and some of the concepts.

A beautiful memoir! I read the whole book in one day and loved it, but realize it's not for people who don't enjoy talking about food. It's a memoir about the experience of the author's loss of her Korean mother to cancer. It's also about how she comes to terms with a complicated mother-daughter relationship ending and how her mother's passing confuses her own Korean identity, being of mixed heritage. The one major common ground between the author and her mother was their love of Korean cuisine. For this reason, there are many long descriptions of food within the book. I personally loved it and now can't wait to explore Korean cuisine more, but realize that not every reader will agree. As an Italian American woman with one immigrant parent from Italy, I can relate to the author's experience. Italians love connecting over their meals together and the Italian food itself, of course. In my family, we always joke that my parents spend breakfast discussing what to make for lunch and talk about what to make for dinner during lunch. We're always planning the next yummy meal! So I'd say: if you love reading memoirs and learning about different cultures (and their food), then you will love this book! But if reading about the death of a parent to cancer would be too much for you to handle, then skip it.

Emotionally powerful. Well worth the long wait for the library loan.

A very beautiful story about the love and loss and grief journey of Michelle Zauner after her mother's passing.

What a beautiful tribute to her "Lovely" mother.

I connected with this at first because of my own complicated relationship with my mother. Zauner had struggles with both of her parents, for different reasons. She was finally feeling like she was coming back to achieving a closer relationship with her mother, when she finds out her mom has been diagnosed with cancer. She lives in the East Coast and her parents are in Eugene, Oregon, so she drops everything to head back home across the country. In between recounting the horrors of watching her mother suffer through this terrible illness, Zauner threads in memories of growing up with her Korean mother and American father, the good and the bad. She had tried to reconnect with her mother through food, and her writing becomes almost lyrical, and you can almost taste these meals she's lovingly recreated and how it's given her a better appreciation of her mother and her heritage.

I couldn't help but feel for her when, after her mother passes, she has dreams of her mother being alive and in the dream being so happy to see her, that she's not dead after all, she was just away somewhere, or couldn't contact her for some reason -- only to wake up to reality. Well, 30 years after my brother passed away all too young from lung cancer, I still have those dreams. Not as frequently as I used to, but they still come. I still am just as happy to see him, and still devastated to wake up to the knowledge that he's still gone.

Extra bonus: The author is a musician, in a band Japanese Breakfast, and her references to music were also fun to read. Now I have to go look up some of this music she wrote about!