“Love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.”
Leaving readers with teary-eyes and rumbling-stomachs, Michelle Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart” portrays hunger as an abstract emotion and grief as a physical sensation. The 2021 memoir explores Zauner’s mother’s death from cancer, delving into the complexity of mother-daughter relationships and biracial identity.
Zauner, a Korean American author, is the lead vocalist for the band Japanese Breakfast. However, Zauner’s success with music takes a backseat to her narration of her mother’s battle with illness, and rather than a personal memoir, “Crying in H Mart” could be surmised as a dedicated eulogy — a heartbreaking, mouth-watering story about grief, loss and love.
The title references a Korean American supermarket chain, where Zauner recounts various nostalgic memories of grocery shopping with her mother and munching on various food court delicacies. It is one of the many culinary settings she describes throughout the book as she attempts to reckon with her mother’s passing and her own identity. The food descriptions are deliciously written, with careful odes to made-from-scratch kimchi, cold radish soup and samgyupsal (grilled pork belly). In a bittersweet parallel, Zauner reflects on her appreciation for her mother’s parenting, while also gaining a new appreciation for the labor that goes into making the dishes she enjoys eating.
The books’ titular short story “Crying in H Mart” can be found in The New Yorker if you are interested in a small taste of the memoir. If you have lost a loved one, you will find solace in Zauner’s words, and the end of the memoir will urge you to give your parents a call to say, “I love you.” At the very least, you might feel inspired to journey to an Atlanta H Mart or try some Korean barbecue.
