I loved this memoir of love between a mother and daughter, between a Korean-American and her Korean culture, and with the food and traditions of that culture. The way Zauner writes about her experience of her mother's illness after their complicated relationship in her youth is so relatable and engaging, and her archiving of grief stark and provoking.

A profound and poignant memoir that’s brimming with truth and raw emotion. Michelle Zauner , a Korean American musician, shares her personal experience navigating life before and after her mother’s death from cancer. Her relationship with her mother was complex and difficult at times but their shared love of Korean food and familial customs brought them together. An intimate exploration of the connection between food and love, mother and child, identity and place and grief and forgiveness. Descriptive, thought provoking and full of emotion this is a standout to be savored.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was absolutely heartwrenching. Michelle's writing is wonderful, and she does a great job of balancing the tragedy of her relationship with her mom and its roots in Korean food. An exceptional debut and would be thrilled to read literally anything else she wanted to talk about.

This book deserves all the praise it has been receiving and more. I totally agree with the reviewers who say don’t read this book if you are hungry. Evocative descriptions of food, expands on what home means, how do other people shape our own identity, how to hold onto memories after loss. Beautiful memoir that I will recommend over and over again.

I enjoyed this book— but it wasn’t an “I can’t put it down” relationship. I stepped away from it a lot and took an unusually long time to finish. But. I would recommend this memoir, in particular to anyone who has experienced the loss of a parent, or who lives a multicultural experience and takes comfort in the defining -and bonding- nature of food between people, families, generations and identities.
My favorite part was when her mother was still alive - those conversations made me laugh out loud in delight, surprise, but also recognition. While the focus on food is a great narrative tool, there were moments when it grew tedious. Overall I enjoyed the book, am now interested in the author as an artist. 3,5 stars

This is a memorable, powerful memoir that will have you crying wherever you read it. Zauner writes beautifully about the relationship between mothers and daughters, about the tangled knot of art and grief, about being an outsider in two worlds, about the bonds of family, and most of all, about food - so much delicious food. One of the best books of 2021.

3.5 stars.

A long belated thank you to Netgalley for an ARC though I read the hard copy. It's a solid memoir that is jam-packed (groan) with food descriptions and focused on the mother-daughter relationship. If only our technology was advanced enough so we could smell and taste what she describes.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/20/988665726/a-daughter-grieves-her-mom-and-finds-herself-in-crying-in-h-mart
By the time I came to know Michelle Zauner as a writer, when The New Yorker published her personal essay "Crying in H Mart" in August 2018, I had been following her as a musician for five years.

I first saw her perform in Philadelphia as the frontwoman of emo band Little Big League in 2013; when she emerged with her poppy shoegaze solo project Japanese Breakfast in 2016, I recognized Zauner only in her soaring, searching voice.

Psychopomp, the first record Zauner released as Japanese Breakfast, hinted at where she had been in between: escorting her mother from the world of the living to that of the dead. The first track "In Heaven" tells some of the story of the aftermath of her mother's death of cancer in 2014: "The dog's confused / She just paces around all day / sniffing at your empty room / I'm trying to believe / When I sleep it's really you / Visiting my dreams / like they say that angels do." Those lyrics break me a little each time I hear them, reminding me of my own grief, of my own sweet childhood dog who looked for my mother and father after they both died of cancer when I was a teenager.

But where Psychopomp and her 2017 record Soft Sounds from Another Planet explore death and grief in sparse lyrics over upbeat synths, in "Crying in H Mart" Zauner digs much deeper. The essay meditates on how shopping at the Korean American supermarket H Mart brought her mother back to her but still made her loss sting. At H Mart, Zauner writes, "you'll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom's soy-sauce eggs."

"Crying in H Mart," stood out to me as a representation of grief that I could relate to — one that doesn't reach for silver linings, but illuminates the unending nature of loss: "Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I'm colliding into a wall that won't give...a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again."

That essay became the first chapter of Zauner's new memoir, also titled Crying in H Mart, which powerfully maps a complicated mother-daughter relationship cut much too short. Stories of Korean food serve as the backbone of the book, as Zauner plumbs the connections between food and identity. That search takes on new urgency after her mother's death — in losing her mother, she also lost her strongest tether to Korean culture.

Zauner was born in Seoul, the daughter of Chongmi, a native of the city, and Joel, a white American. When she was a year old, the family relocated to Eugene, Oregon, where her mother ruled with an exacting nature. Chongmi was a woman in pursuit of perfection in everything, and of course this prodding extended to her only child. At a young age, Zauner realized that one way she could get her mother's approval was demonstrating an adventurous appetite. On trips to Seoul, they bonded over midnight snacks on jet-lagged nights, when they "ate ganjang gejang...sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell."

Zauner's food descriptions transport us to the table alongside her. On a college break, when her mother prepares galbi ssam, the relief of being cared for with a meal attuned to one's tastes radiates off the page: "Blissfully I laid my palm flat, blanketed it with a piece of lettuce, and dressed it just the way I liked — a piece of glistening short rib, a spoonful of warm rice, a dredge of ssamjang, and a thin slice of raw garlic...I closed my eyes and savored the first few chews, my taste buds and stomach having been deprived of a home-cooked meal."

It is this kind of care that Zauner attempts to repay for her mother when she is diagnosed with stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma in her stomach at age 56. After her mother's diagnosis in May 2014, Zauner, then 25, moves home, ready to bolster Chongmi through chemotherapy with Korean cooking.

But chemo wrecks the appetite — I recall my mother being plagued with everything tasting as though it were laced with metal. During the first round of chemo, her mother can't keep food down; during the second round, she develops mouth sores that make eating painful. When the chemo fails to shrink her tumor, Chongmi decides to forgo further treatment, having learned a lesson from her younger sister Eunmi, who died of colon cancer following 24 chemo treatments. In this, Crying in H Mart is a rare acknowledgement of the ravages of cancer in a culture obsessed with seeing it as an enemy that can be battled with hope and strength.

Zauner carries the same clear-eyed frankness to writing about her mother's death five months after her diagnosis. One chapter recounts her mother's last days, unconscious at home, her breathing "a horrible sucking like the last sputtering of a coffeepot." It is rare to read about a slow death in such detail, an odd gift in that it forces us to sit with mortality rather than turn away from it.

Also notable is that Chongmi's death does not fall at the end of the book. It comes just past halfway through, allowing Zauner ample space to grapple with the immensity of her loss. One balm that emerges is reconnecting with her Korean identity through finally learning to cook the dishes she longed to make for her mother.

As a teen, Zauner drifted away from her Koreanness, effacing that side of her heritage for fear of being seen as other. In those same years, she shrunk from her mother's need for control and constant wheedling. Just as they established their adult relationship — just as Zauner begun to embrace her mother's culture — her mother died: "What would have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key."

Cooking becomes the key. Her teacher is Maangchi, described by The New York Times as "YouTube's Korean Julia Child." In cooking, Zauner conjures ghosts: her aunt Eunmi munching on Korean fried chicken, her mother ordering more kimchi to go with knife-cut noodle soup in Seoul, her grandmother slurping black-bean noodles.

Near the end of the book, Zauner meditates on the process of fermenting kimchi, and how it allows cabbage to "enjoy a new life altogether." She realizes that she needs to tend to her memories and heritage in the same way: "The culture that we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me...If I could not be with my mother, I would be her."

What Crying in H Mart reveals, though, is that in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself.

Wow, this memoir. I think I was worried that the book would be much more focused on Zauner's musical career (which didn't interest me that much, as I didn't even know who Japanese Breakfast was before I heard about this book). But it ended up being this beautiful, complex, at times painful book about mother-daughter relationships, grief, food, what it means to be part of two cultures at once (but never really enough). At no point was this book over the top or sickly-sweet. But it was also pretty raw. Definitely a memorable book that I will be purchasing for my shelf.

This book is heartbreaking. Point blank. You know from the beginning that this is the story of Michelle losing her mother. Having lost mine in 2019 I know the pain and utter confusion of losing the person who made you. Our losses looked and felt different I’m sure. Michelle is an only child and didn’t have sibling to lean on, she wasn’t super close with her father and mine is my best friend. She also admits that her and her mother had a rocky relationship. They only part of this that I can relate to is where Michelle says the best years we’re cut short. I feel that way too. When you lose your mom in your 20’s you miss all the time that you actually get along and can appreciate each other and have a true friendship. I had that with my mom, we got over the teenage angst years and really were friends. Michelle was just getting there with her mom and it was all stolen away from her. What I love about this book is the cultural aspect, Michelle traveled with her mom to Korea often as a child to visit her grandmother and aunts. Part of losing her mom was the loss of part of her identity and trying to figure out how to keep those Korean traditions alive. Anyway I loved this book, go read it you will cry, it’s lovely, it’s painful, its so real. Thank you for sharing

This was such a charming story of family love and Korean culture - recommend for everyone to read and weep.

I loved this book. It felt like I was having a conversation with the author. Her writing was beautiful and made me cry in the best way.

I absolutely loved this book. It was so deeply personal, it felt almost intrusive reading it. I would highly recommend this to every one.

What started out as an essay published in The New Yorker in 2018 became the sounding board for a captivatingly layered memoir tackling pain and grief with the comforts of cooking, music, and family. Written by Korean-American musician, director, and author Michelle Zauner, Crying in Hmart has taken the literary year by storm and rightfully so. Those into the indie music scene may already be familiar with Zauner as the lead of the indie band Japanese Breakfast who’s debut album Psychopomp also has connections with Zauner’s grieving process after losing her mother to cancer in 2014. Crying in Hmart opens up with Zauner doing just that- crying in an Hmart food court as she connects with the memories of her Korean mother through the comfort of food. Zauner’s mother shared her love through food and as part of her grieving process Zauner strives to reconnect with her mother and Korean heritage through familiar dishes and ingredients. Crying in Hmart is an intersection of retrospection and forward momentum with the importance of cooking and gathering highlighted along the way. If you are not as familiar with Korean cooking and ingredients, a great pairing with this book are Author and food blogger Maangchi’s recipes which Zauner finds great comfort in when learning to prepare her mother’s favorite dishes. Crying in Hmart is heavy, light, and everything in between and Zauner’s creative voice provides a welcomed level of depth and expressivity.

A heartfelt and solemn memoir of losing a parent, who was both inspiring and at times overly critical (love comes in many forms). The descriptions of Korean food and society struck me particularly. Every day is a good day for kimchi bokumbop.

“Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.”

“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”

Synopsis: This is Michelle Zauner’s memoir about losing her mother to cancer in her mid-twenties, and finding her identity as a biracial Korean American woman.

Yall, this memoir is everything. It was devastating yet such a poignant exploration of grief. I couldn’t find it in myself to write a review for weeks because I needed time to process everything about it. I listened to most of it during a solo drive from LA to SF and I was 100% a hazard on the freeway because I was crying so hard. All I wanted to do was call my mom and tell her how much I loved her. Zauner was able to perfectly capture in words experiences and feelings that I wanted to express so badly but never could. From being the child of immigrant parents, going through the shock of a parent receiving a cancer diagnosis, to the importance of embracing my culture.

Crying in Hmart is such a beautiful ode to Zauner’s mother. This is without a doubt the best memoir I have ever read. I could not recommend it enough.

I loved this book. It is a fast read and perfect for the weekend ahead. I work in a Japanese university and we are buying a couple copies of this book as it will fit perfectly in our collection.

Shopping at H Mart will never be the same. Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart has changed the experience forever. No one who has read it will be able to wander the Korean market’s aisles free of the feeling that Zauner’s mother is there, watching, explaining, encouraging. Zauner’s yearning for her dead mother is tangible in this extraordinary memoir. Anyone who has lost a parent will marvel at her ability to articulate the envy she feels when she sees an old woman with her adult child and her feeling of being cheated out of the time she might have had with her mother. The way she writes about how food expresses love reveals her understanding of how much her mother loved her and how closely food is tied to her identity as a Korean American of mixed race. She may have wished to be white as an adolescent, but as an adult she appreciates how profoundly Korean food enables her to embrace her mother’s culture. And her mouth-watering descriptions of ingredients and dishes makes one want to go shopping and out to a Korean restaurant.

In this moving memoir, Zauner tells the relationship with her mother and their connection through the Korean dishes. Zauner talks about regret and how grief can settle in the most deepest of recesses, but also about learning her culture and finding herself.

Crying In H Mart was one of my most anticipated books of 2021, and it didn't disappoint me one bit. As someone who has had an ailing and dying parent, this book spoke to me so much. It's such a beautiful story. And Zauner is an amazing writer. I didn't want the book to end and I hope she continues to write more. I would read ANYTHING by her.

5/5 Stars