BOOK OF THE MONTH
Crying in H Mart: A Memoir
#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).
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Community Reviews
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Crying in the H Mart by Michelle Zauner
239 pages
What’s it about?
The old adage that "complicated relationships bring complicated grief" is demonstrated in this memoir. Michelle is only in her mid-twenties when she realizes that her mother is seriously ill. She is just beginning to come to terms with her immigrant mother and their complicated love when she finds herself having to say goodbye. Mother and daughter relationships are always complicated but this memoir shows us the added burden of being from distinctly different cultures.
What did it make me think about?
Mothers and daughters and food!
Should I read it?
If you are a fan of memoirs then pick this book up. I learned of Michelle Zauner through her music, but she is a talented writer as well. This is a clear, candid look at growing up biracial in America. Her mother's use of food to show love and care plays a central role in this slim book and I found these references especially illuminating. "I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families . How many are thinking of them as they being their trays back from the different stalls. If they're eating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food. Which ones weren't able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years? Which ones are like me, missing the people who are gone from their lives forever?"
Quote-
"It was difficult to write about someone I felt I knew so well. The words were unwieldy, enforced with pretensions. I wanted to uncover something special about her that only I could reveal. That she was so much more than a housewife, than a mother. That she was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create."
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Crying in the H Mart by Michelle Zauner
239 pages
What’s it about?
The old adage that "complicated relationships bring complicated grief" is demonstrated in this memoir. Michelle is only in her mid-twenties when she realizes that her mother is seriously ill. She is just beginning to come to terms with her immigrant mother and their complicated love when she finds herself having to say goodbye. Mother and daughter relationships are always complicated but this memoir shows us the added burden of being from distinctly different cultures.
What did it make me think about?
Mothers and daughters and food!
Should I read it?
If you are a fan of memoirs then pick this book up. I learned of Michelle Zauner through her music, but she is a talented writer as well. This is a clear, candid look at growing up biracial in America. Her mother's use of food to show love and care plays a central role in this slim book and I found these references especially illuminating. "I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families . How many are thinking of them as they being their trays back from the different stalls. If they're eating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food. Which ones weren't able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years? Which ones are like me, missing the people who are gone from their lives forever?"
Quote-
"It was difficult to write about someone I felt I knew so well. The words were unwieldy, enforced with pretensions. I wanted to uncover something special about her that only I could reveal. That she was so much more than a housewife, than a mother. That she was her own spectacular individual. Perhaps I was still sanctimoniously belittling the two roles she was ultimately most proud of, unable to accept that the same degree of fulfillment may await those who wish to nurture and love as those who seek to earn and create."
If you liked this try-
Forty Autumns by Nina Willner
H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald
My Brother Moochie by Issac J. Bailey
“I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it.”
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!
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!
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