Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

favorite favorite favorite book of all time, cried soo much and it was so beautifully written i was glued to my book

Really stroke a chord within me - a heartwarming memoir for mother and daughter relationships.

Beautiful memoir about love and loss and growth and family and identify and food. Made me laugh and cry and very hungry.

One of my favorite reads this year. Michelle Zauner's writing has a simplicity and honesty that beautifully captures the raw complexity of a fraught mother-daughter relationship, the frustrating angst surrounding a bi-cultural upbringing, and the destabilizing pain that accompanies the loss of a loved one. She writes food so vividly I could almost smell the meals coming off the page. I imagine grief is a scalding well and one I never want to drink from, though I know the time will come. This book feels like a sign telling you that life will go on after you drink from that well, even if there's a deep ache that forever lives on in your core.

i listened to this on a plane ride, which was an interesting decision as it honestly made me shed a tear more than once. this book was first recommended to me as a great book about the asian american experience. then someone else mentioned that the author is the japanese breakfast person, so i was thinking even more that i should read this. however, i just hadn’t gotten around to it until i had 20 hours to kill.

did it live up to the hype? i think: not quite. i just heard this book being recommended absolutely everywhere, and it didn’t blow me away. that being said i really enjoyed that exploration of the authors relationship with her mom. it was so complicated, and i felt like that came through without making me feel like the mother was totally wicked or should be totally forgiven. i thought this book was going to be more broadly applicable to the asian american experience rather than more memoir-like. so i guess i was just a bit disappointed because i expected to relate to it even more. that being said, that’s a flaw of me, not the book, and i did think the book was written pretty beautifully.

i also kept falling asleep and having to go back like three chapters so this review is sponsored by soundcore. somehow my headphones just kept going every time i fell asleep and left them on. like i used them for hours and hours and it was totally fine!

rating: 4 stars