Crying in H Mart - MXHDR BookWyrm

Hardcover, 256 pages

English language

Published April 20, 2021 by Knopf Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-0-525-65774-3
OCLC Number:: 10428896036

(2 reviews)

A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Michelle Zauner 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 …

A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Michelle Zauner 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.

1 edition

Josh Daymude reviewed Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

A Rare and Beautiful Expression of Biraciality

4 stars

Michelle Zauner’s memoir of her mother expertly navigates themes of biracial identity, Korean food, and human suffering. Owing to the many life experiences Zauner and I share as half-Korean, half-white people, she speaks to realities that have always eluded my own expression. For that—and for her beautiful, spiritual descriptions of Korean food—I am deeply grateful.

Long version: jdaymude.github.io/review/book-crying-in-h-mart/

loppear reviewed Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

we've been eating comforting korean food a lot more this month

4 stars

Great memoir of losing a parent as a young adult, and of Korean cuisine's staples and nooks, like a nostalgic meal this is heavy but a rich balance of time spent caring and fearing and collecting and tying back to well before and gathering the family into what comes after.

Subjects

Nonfiction
Memoir
Coming of Age
Korean American
Seoul
Cancer
Korean food
Rock music