Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Beautiful, heart-wrenching story about love and loss.

The connection of food and love in Asian families is something that Zauner describes beautifully. My husband is Chinese American and I hope to one day give our child the vibrant memories of food that Zauner describes (hopefully with a little less internal conflict over their identity, but we'll have to see). She expresses herself very clearly and I'm not usually super into memoirs, but I would read more about her life if it's directly described by her.

I only finished it because I was reading it for a book club. I get why she wrote it - I write for my own therapy also. But it didn't grab me like I wished it would. Having gone through a lot of similar emotions about my own mother's death from cancer and also with some complicated feelings about. my dad's death, I was hoping for something more moving. It just didn't touch me. Also, I kind of felt bad for Peter, with the whole "marry me now so that my mom can be there."

I found this to be very mid. I feel for the author’s loss. But the story wasn’t entirely memorable.

Wonderful memoir that somehow manages to be a love letter to the author’s family, culture, and to Zauner herself. This memoir was so raw and poignantly self-aware that it both pained me as an Asian-American reader, and empowered me into the pitfalls, triumphs, and beauties of my culture. I was recommended this book with the words “if you want to cry,” and trust that while I was not “crying in h mart,” I was crying at my finance desk job and I wasn’t embarrassed by it at all.