Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner | Book Review
Penguin Random House
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
About the Book: 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.
Review
I don’t know if I have ever read a book that made a grocery store sound so good. I actually haven’t been to H-Mart as the nearest one is nearly 400 miles away. I do remember, however, the very first time I went into a neighborhood Asian grocery as a child with my other friend and her mom who was Chinese. I walked through the aisles, aweing at the unfamiliar produce and colorful packaged snacks and drinks. It was a spiritual experience, even if I didn’t fully know it yet.
Michelle Zauner’s relationship with H-Mart is permanently tied to her relationship with her mom. Her biracial identity is a focus of her memoir as she recounts struggling to balance the identity of living in between multiple worlds. Similar to many multi-racial Americans, Zauner had favored her “white” side and assimilating over her Korean side. Her relationship with her mother is messy and complex. It is only after her mom gets sick and passes, that Zauner is forced to reconcile her relationship with her mom. She attempts to reflect and find connection to her Korean heritage when that tie (her mom) is no longer alive.
I relate to this feeling to this reckoning. Through assimilation there is a break with a culture that is yet somehow inexplicably tied to our appearance. Think about how obsessed white Americans are with knowing where we are “really from.” At the same time, being “too Asian” is seen as either a threat or fetishized as exotic. So no wonder we are constantly teetering between being “too Asian” and not “Asian enough.” This is one of the best memoirs I have read all year.