Michelle Zauner absolutely bares her soul in this one! Delving deeply into her fraught relationship with her mother, the effects of her mother's influence in her life, and the devastating loss of her mother at a young age to cancer, Zauner does not flinch from the harrowing details. But this book also contains so much joy! Zauner discovered herself through this journey and we are all privileged to be able to have a glimpse.

This book is one of those that leaves you thinking about it even after you've read it. Michelle Zauner's memoir of losing her mother too young to cancer and having to navigate grief and how to connect with her Korean culture without the tether of her mother. Zauner was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and American father but spent most of her childhood in rural Oregon. As a young adult, she moves to Philadelphia and begins to set up a life for herself as an aspiring musician with a boyfriend and friends. At 25, the year that was supposed to be her year, Michelle receives a phone call from her mother that they have found a tumor in her stomach. That tumor turns out to be stage IV cancer. Michelle returns home to nurse her mother through chemotherapy and, in the process, try to connect to her mother and her Korean roots through the dishes her mother always made. Unfortunately, after two rounds of chemo, the cancer remains undeterred and Michelle has to watch a her once beautiful, vibrant, opinionated mother withers away in pain until she succumbs to her disease. In her grief, Michelle turns to a Korean YouTuber who makes many of the Korean dishes Michelle grew up on, and in these videos, Michelle is able to find catharsis in cooking the recipes that remind her of her mom. This book was heartbreaking and tragic but watching as Michelle begins to find ways to connect with her mom, even though she is physically gone, was beautiful.

Grappling with issues of death, cancer and familial relationships, this memoir follows the author as she and her father come to terms with her mother's cancer diagnosis and eventual death. This memoir will be sought by those interested in immigration, Korean culture and food, and cancer stories.

For the past two years, I’ve taught Zauner’s essay “Love, Loss, and Kimchi” to my sophomores, pairing it with Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie” (one of my favorite short stories). My incoming students will read her essay this upcoming quarter, as it has become a bit of a staple in my sophomore curriculum.

That said, out of 5 ⭐️s, Crying in H Mart was a 4-⭐️ read for me.

Zauner’s complicated relationship with her mom, and her navigation of her own personal and cultural identity are central to her memoir. I most appreciate Zauner’s tasteful (🥣) descriptions of Korean food, dishes that unite her with the memory of her mother, and the way in which Zauner elucidates her bond with her mother via recollections of a shared palate.

Although I appreciate her candor, Zauner’s occasional biting tone—more often interjected through asides—felt a bit critical and acrid, at times, yet I also presume that this memoir likely captures her personality in an accurate manner.

Overall, Zauner offers a beautiful tribute to her mom, one that feels honest and sincere. At times, I wondered if fragments of onion were embedded within the binding of my book (🧅😩💦), if you know what I mean! 😭

There are so many parallels between Michelle's story and my own history that I can't help but feel connected in sad and profound ways.

She and I are both half Asian, about the same age, and cared for a parent dying of cancer at the exact same time in 2014. I grew up playing with the same toys she mentions and lived across from the Lower East Side bars and indie venues she recalls. I love food passionately and thus relished her many descriptions throughout.

I relived my own father's death while reading this book - in my heart I know many cancer caretakers have gone through the same pattern: initial we-can-beat-this mentality, chemo side effects, repeated hospital visits, desperation, food refusal, overmedicating, caring for your parent as if they're an infant, and then waiting out their death. But I'd not yet read an account from someone so alike me, and it affected me more than I anticipated. I'm grateful for this book and for Michelle Zauner's willingness to be honest and generous in sharing her story.

Memoirs are always hard to rate but the emotions in this one were so complex and raw and devastating. That said, the writing and pacing were a little stilted. I'm definitely glad this book exists, though and really appreciate that she was able to write this book.

It's a touching insight into the Korean mother. The subtle descriptions of the mother-daughter relationship flooded my brain with similarities in my own relationship with my Korean mother. The uniquely Korean experiences made me laugh out loud. Zauner questions her right to her Korean heritage after her mother's passing. It's clear that the Korean humility and Korean guilt she expresses throughout the book makes her 100% Korean for life!

Crying in H Mart was an incredibly beautiful memoir. Having a very sick mother myself I related to Michelle and i could feel her pain and loss. I cried and loved every page of her book. Thank you for sharing your story.

I loved this book. My favorite part was reading about how food tied Michelle to her mother and learning so much about her Korean culture.

Gosh, this book was beautiful. Zauner’s story of her mother’s battle with cancer and the struggles in their relationship was heartbreaking and relatable. The way she grappled with her identity as a biracial person, and how her parents did or didn’t understand. How much food played a part in her childhood and later in her healing. I absolutely loved it. Highly recommend listening to it on audio.

Michelle Zauner's debut memoir is a glimmering, swollen-hearted, lustrous feast of a love story. There is nothing romanticized or saccharine about her recollections of her late mother & her own thorny relationship with her, as well as her wider experiences negotiating whiteness and Korean-American identity. There's something so specifically gutting and gorgeous about this book, largely because, I think, though the details may be different, there's an extremely familiar dynamic at play that often lingers in children of diaspora. The tensions Zauner so thickly, beautifully articulates ring as resonant as any bell; I recognize my own familial contusions and bruisings and gestures of love at play through a different lens. Like the food she writes so evocatively, there's this sticky, meaty tenderness at the marrow of this book, and its exploration of food as a love language and as a language that can simultaneously reveal the ways we misdirect or misplace our love. I'm a devoted fan of Japanese Breakfast's music and this memoir evokes the same feelings I often get when listening to her song "This House," which is exquisite and lonely and devastating in how it spatializes grief as a kitchen, and all the ways we try to fill a house with the same scents and favorite dishes of someone who's gone, and all the ways it will never quite smell or taste the same again.

A poignant intersection between familial relationships, intergenerational trauma, and food-this memoir had me in tears most of the time, but also had me smiling. There were so many familiar moments that I could relate to as a daughter of immigrants, and how important my own culture's food is to the identity of my mom and me. This memoir made me realize how precious life is, and how important it is too keep your loved ones close, and find ways to honor their memory after they've long gone. Michelle Zauner does a wonderful job of walking us through her search of her own identity, whom and what defines her, and how she carries on in the face of grief.

This loosely reminded me of Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” I loved Zauner’s voice and pacing, but more so, I loved her reverent food descriptions and unflinching depiction of death, grief, and mourning. Her relationship with her mother will be relatable to so many. What a gorgeous and generous book.

Crying in H Mart is about Michelle Zauner and her relationship with her mother and her culture.
This was a well-written, interesting book. There are a lot of very emotional moments about her relationship with her mother. Michelle is a talented writer and her prose always felt captivating and authentic.

My Thoughts:
This memoir by indie rockstar Michelle Zauner is the best kind of eulogy to the author's Korean mother. It captures through metaphors of culture, language, place, face moisturizers, food, even a kim chi refrigerator the complex relationship between a mother and a daughter. As a mixed Asian daughter of a mixed Asian daughter of an Asian daughter. . . this series of essays/chapters makes that obvious connection to my own relationship with food as love as mother and grandmothers, sisters, and daughters, even granddaughters.

What this book made me remember was that I have always liked memoirs, even when I was actually a middle grades and high schooler. I especially liked memoirs of people that were not widely known because when I got to the end, searched for more information about them to continue the journey. This is no exception. I ended up looking on my Amazon Music account to find Psychochomp, the album she started writing as her mother was dying. She chose to put a picture of her mother on the cover, reaching toward the camera.

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I even found a Youtube interview where Maangchi, the Korean food blogger that helps Zauner to heal through food, is talking to Zauner and Sarah Lee of Kimbap Lab about Budae Jjigae "army base stew" with ramen noodles, Spam and Vienna sausage.

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Finally, as I read this, I thought about my students in both middle and high school who were also in the middle of caring for their own dying mothers. They are etched in my memories as we tried to figure out how to both support them and bring some sort of normalcy into the time away from home. I hope they are well. I hope that a piece like this will help them heal and be a mirror for their own complex experience. I hope this is a sliding glass door and a window for students to think about their own relationships with their parents. Mostly, I hope they learn to cook the kinds of comfort foods that will give them peace later in life.

From the Publisher:
From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

This memoir of a woman whose mother is dying of cancer is a standout. Zauner's narration is tender and emotional without being sentimental. Her descriptions of food and cooking are inviting, comprehensive without being too technical or intimidating, and exude the warmth and love that all familial cooking should. She has a real knack for analogies when writing about her grief and emotions. An excellent choice for food writing fans, memoir fans, and all-around good book fans.

I ugly-cried through so much of this book. Deeply heartfelt, raw, and unflinchingly honest. Zauner manages to capture the complexity of her relationship with her mother without feeling exploitative or sugar-coating.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really incredible memoir. It follows Michelle Zauner, better known as the lead of the band Japanese Breakfast, as she discovers and deals with her mother's cancer diagnosis. There aren't a ton of light spots in this book but it is a surprisingly quick read. Zauner does a really wonderful job of weaving in her identity as a Korean American and what that means for her, both in relation to and separate of her mother's illness. The use of food throughout the book as a cultural touchpoint and a way for Zauner to connect with her identity and grief was also so poignant.

I also really appreciated the way this book dealt with grief. It did not shy away of talking about the ugly parts of grief, and the ugly parts of a mother-daughter relationship. Though this book specifically focuses on Michelle's relationship with her mother, I think anyone could read this book and relate it to their own relationships with their parents.

This book was a great memoir/biography that will interest readers interested in music, Korean culture, and Michelle's background and band. Her honest portrayal of her feelings growing up as she navigates her relationships with her parents is poignant and heartfelt. Ultimately, the story comes full circle as she becomes one of her mother's caretakers as she fights her cancer. Her story is one that so many will relate to!

Outstanding. There's a frankness to Zauner's writing which cuts to the quick. Love and grief and the diaspora experience are so inextricably linked in her story and yet all so sharply rendered. Her pain speaks to your own, it draws from somewhere deep within her that's impossible not to respond to. One of the best, most moving books I've read this year.

Full review available on my blog.