Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

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!

Zauner’s memoir touches on her music career and the beginnings of Japanese Breakfast but the main focus is on the loss of her mother to cancer. Zauner does not shy away from the difficult story of her mother’s decline and being the first line of defense and support as the cancer slowly takes her mother away. This memoir is phenomenal, heart wrenching, and beautiful. It was difficult to read at times from how bleak it is at moments, but Zauner’s prose and focus on moving on despite her loss is inspiring. I have been a fan of Japanese Breakfast for years but I am not also a dedicated fan to her as an author as well. Highly recommend reading and listing to Michell Zauner’s works!

Unbelievably sad. I felt like this book was so heavy that I could only read it one chapter at a time. It hurt to sit there and read about Michelle’s mom fading away. It hurt to know her every thought as she watched. It hurt to know that deep down her mother really, truly loved her. I can’t imagine a life where I could ever feel the same about my own mom and her to me — and that’s what hurt the most.