Name: Omar Fernandez's review of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Item: Crying in H Mart
Rating: 3
Author: Omar Fernandez

Michelle Zauner

THE NO 2 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, powerful, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean 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 humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid 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, 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 pancreatic 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, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Crying in H Mart

"From the indie rock star 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 humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid 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, 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 pancreatic 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, Michelle 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".

A Memoir

Sarah Christine Gill

I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether. 

Weeks went by before I saw the fridge in person. It was Thanksgiving, the second without my mother. I made sweet potato tempura, which was what my mother always brought to Thanksgiving at Uncle Ron’s house. I remember on the drive over holding the heavy serving plate in my lap, stacked high with fried, battered sweet potatoes covered in cling wrap. On the drive home, the plate would be empty, and my mother would boast about how much my American cousins loved her tempura.

Saved this because I simply do not know what it means!

“I can’t believe you’re actually getting married,” Corey said, gazing at me misty-eyed and in disbelief, as if just the other day we had been twelve, brainstorming names for our tennis balls.

We’d giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking our soy sauce–stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean.”

Nami Emo’s room was on the other side of the kitchen, abutting the small balcony that overlooked the street. She had a large, jade-colored vanity, its surface strewn with a hundred different kinds of nail polish. At the beginning of each visit, she would invite me to choose a color and after my careful deliberation, paint my nails on top of newspaper. When she was done, she’d use a special freezing spray from an aerosol can that helped them dry faster. The liquid would foam over my cuticles, then disappear like dry ice sneezed onto my fingertips.

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.

Ausrine Blazyte

Let me feel this, I wanted to scream. Hold me, and let me wall ow in it. I thought to myself that if I ever had children, I'd never tell them to save their tears. That anyone who'd been hardened with those words would grow to hate them just as much as I did. And now discovered my rebellious mother had been scolded with this phrase all along.

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

 That night, lying beside her, I remembered how when I was a child I would slip my cold feet between my mother's thighs to warm them. How she'd shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort, that that was how you knew someone really loved you.

I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didn't eat seafood, if you hada large appetite. She remembered which banchan side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over itd be set with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you.

Stavros Kosmas

My father and l ranuaiy daminsteIed liquid hydrocodone under her tongue. Minutes felt like hours as we held her, reassuring her over and over that it would pass. At last she settled into a deep sleep. Sandwiching her between us, I filled with insurmountable sadness. The doctor had lied to us. Hed told us she wouldn't feel any pain; hed told us it was his job to make sure of it. He looked into her eyes and made a promise, and he fucking broke it. My mothers last words were pain.

"Gwaenchanh-a, gwaenchanh-a," she said. It's okay, it's okay. Korean words so familiar, the gentle coo Id heard my whole life that assured me whatever ache was at hand would pass. Even as she was dying, my mother offered me solace, her instinct to nurture overwhelming any personal fear she might have felt but kept expertly hidden. She was the only person in the world who could tell me that things would all work out somehow. The eye of the storm, a calm witness to the wreckage spinning out into its end.

This obsession with my mother's caloric intake killed my own appetite. Since ld been in Eugene, I'd lost ten pounds. The little lap of belly my mother always pinched at had disappeared and my hair began to fall out in large chunks in the shower from the stress. In a perverse way I was glad for it. My own weight loss made me feel tied to her. I wanted to embody a physical warning- that if she began to disappear, I would disappear too.

It was not lost on me how different the circumstances were now. Here I was again, this time returned of my own free will, no longer scheming a wild escape into the dark but desperately hoping that a darkness would not come in.

rose <3

What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10  percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. “Even from Daddy, I save,” she would add.

I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it.

Hers was tougher than tough love. It was brutal, industrial-strength. A sinewy love that never gave way to an inch of weakness. It was a love that saw what was best for you ten steps ahead, and didn’t care if it hurt like hell in the meantime....No one in this world would ever love me as much as my mother, and she would never let me forget it.

In my opinion, definitely selfish of the author. A marriage is something one does it willingly at their own pace. Having to drive her then boyfriend to the edge with that “I don’t think I will be able to forgive you” is assigning guilt - manipulation at its best! 

Jun Sani

"If this is something you could see yourself doing in five vears and we don't just do it now, I don't think I will be able to forgive you," I said. 

oonapon

İ remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal afirmation. but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didnt eat sea food, if you had a large appetite. She remembered which banchat side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over it’d be set with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various othe preferences that made you, you. 

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 the only Asian-American kid 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, 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 pancreatic 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, Michelle Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread. PRAISE FOR CRYING IN H MART 'The book's descriptions of jjigae, tteokbokki, and other Korean delicacies stand out as tokens of the deep, all-encompassing love between Zauner and her mother, a love that is charted in vivid descriptions of her mother after death; in a time when people around the world are reckoning with untold loss due to COVID-19, Zauner's frankness around death feels like an unexpected yet deeply necessary gift.' Vogue 'Zauner's writing is powerful in its straight-forwardness, though some turns of phrases are as beautiful as any song lyric... but it is her ability to convey how her mother's simple offering of a rice snack was actually an act of the truest love that leaves the most indelible impression.' Refinery 29 'Poignant . . . A tender, well-rendered, heart-wrenching account of the way food ties us to those who have passed. The author delivers mouthwatering descriptions of dishes like pajeon, jatjuk, and gimbap, and her storytelling is fluid, honest, and intimate . . . Zauner's ability to let us in through taste makes her book stand out- she makes us feel like we are in her mother's kitchen, singing her praises.' Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

kari <33

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 the only Asian-American kid 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, 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 pancreatic 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, Michelle Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

audrey 🪐

Rheanne Wong 

Omar Fernandez

Ali Angco

At first, I took a small bite. I was skeptical - how can a debut memoir about her mother's death and her Korean-American identity be that good? My first bite took over my taste buds. Her writing on regret, loneliness, and grief made me misty-eyed while her descriptions of comforting Korean food made my stomach growl. She balanced gut-wrenching moments with delicious food - as if she was trying to feed me to make the sadness go away.

I continued to eat up this book with bigger bites. I devoured it. Now my stomach and heart are so full.

I hate overhyping books and food since these experiences vary from person-to-person. But Crying in H Mart is a narrative non-fiction memoir that I will share with everyone. This may be my favorite book for 2021. I will happily re-read it again.

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.

Gia Palamos

I knew I was going to love this book. 🦋 I’ve always wondered how someone my age (or someone close to my age) would explain grief and loss. Stories I read before made me feel like I was intruding, but Michelle wrote with such warmth and tenderness, making you feel like it’s okay for you to ~know~ these parts of her story. 

Crying at H Mart is so simple and honest. I feel like we struggle to find ourselves in our parents and it’s always hard to describe the feeling and that battle, but Michelle said it so beautifully.

I cried and laughed while reading this book. There’s so much I want to say but I think I have my first five stars for this year. 💖

I liked a lot of elements here but don't think they added up to a good 

- Think some of this started out as different essays and articles and it reads a bit disjointed like that

- I (obviously) loved that she way she uses food to write about identity, family and relationships but think less would have worked harder - lots of interminable lists of dishes it felt like

I liked a lot of elements here but don't think they added up to a good book. Some thoughts: 

- There is definitely a reason that memoirs are written towards the end of your life
- Would love to read the one she'd write in 10 years even 

- Think some of this started out as different essays and articles and it reads a bit disjointed like that

- I (obviously) loved that she way she uses food to write about identity, family and relationships but think less would have worked harder - lots of interminable lists of dishes it felt like

- She's superb at capturing the general mystery of mothers (and daughters!)

- The bit with the cowboy boots!! ;(

- Loved the bit about death and kimchi at the end. 

Lynn

5 ⭐️ There is no other rating one could give to a memoir written with such raw emotion, haltingly beautiful prose and effervescence of reminiscence. This book handles grief and life in the most gentle parts with a cutting bluntness of words that is refreshing and reverberant in its emotion. The narrative style has a beautiful quality of lifting the fog from past memories when reflecting on them as an adult in a place of healing. And yes, this book does make you want to run to your closest establishment that will serve up the deliciousness that is the Korean kitchen. I expect this book is even more gut-punchingly difficult, yet comforting when grieving a recently lost loved one.

Joana da Silva

Heard this one as an audiobook narrated by Michelle Zauner herself, and I can now understand all the praise it's been getting. This is a wonderful testimony of grief, cultural identity, family, and finding your space within this messy world, told in such a beautiful way. The food descriptions, the way it relates to our memories, and how it can be a symbol of a bonding relationship will leave you hungry and emotional at the same time. I found myself craving kimchi all the time and I don't even like it!

Georg Csarmann

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

I feel so priviledged to be part of her cathartic experience. I enjoyed every page I read, rich with cultural information, ode to her roots and her family, ode to the different kinds of love and stages of life and it was also inspiring as an artist to follow her dreams and achieve success. It was simply brilliant! 

Nina Alexandra Bacrau

Gillian Rose

4.5 stars

This one is going to stick with me for a while. I really want to hug my mom. The way she was able to connect to her mom through food is something I think we all have in common, and you felt the grief in every page. It's such a well-written memoir and extremely sad, but also hopeful as her dreams did come true. Also, I was hungry the whole time.

Sarah Pino

4.5 ⭐

Oh my heart was not ready for the waves of pain this book sent through to me. I just knew it was going to be a sad one. Michelle beeeaaautifully encapsulated the turmoil of grief and the feeling of a beloved being stripped away from you slowly day by day. I was sobbing on the train ride ON THE WAY to my destination with a full face of makeup and I'm pretty sure i worried the people seated across from me.

I had this on my tbr last year. I wanted to have the right mood for it, and alas, the time was, well, yesterday. 

This book appealed to my multiracial background. Michelle put into words what I feel as a 2nd gen immigrant child. All my feelings validated in her memoir.

I empathize greatly with her relationship with her strict, domineering asian mother, but also with their overwhelming close ties. 

I'm so happy I went through this journey. 😌

Brutal look at the relationship between mother and daughter. Had me crying three pages in. 

Jamie Ford

I stopped listening about 30-40% through. So far, the book had deeper moments that were great, but there were also long stretches that weren’t that engaging. I like the connection to food, the themes of wrestling with your ethnic heritage in America, etc. However, I think that my experience is too different to the author’s for this to be more relatable and engaging. 

jiveen liew

crying to psychopomp 

"Gwenchanta, gwenchanta
It's okay sweetheart
Don't cry, I love you"

Essence Lashae

very touching and made me cry a few times!

From the indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker piece, a deeply moving memoir on identity and belonging, grief and joy.

Dorothy Bond

To say this book had me sobbing is an understatement. Crying in H Mart is a brutally honest, lyrical and heart wrenching memoir about identity, loss and the ways in which we try to keep alive those we have lost. Michelle Zauner (singer and guitarist of Japanese Breakfast) relates her upbringing in a mixed race household, struggles with identity, and the loss of her mother to cancer, with a depth that is equal parts vivacious and melancholic.

I had to go slow with this book as somehow I’ve managed to gravitate towards too many illness adjacent memoirs (specifically cancer memoirs) which I tend to avoid due to them bringing up my own traumatic memories. However, Crying in H Mart is so poetic and profound that reading it was such a cathartic experience, even if it was bittersweet. 

I honestly couldn’t do this book justice in a review. So do yourself a favour and grab a copy from your local indie bookstore or local library 🙌🏼

Some quotes I loved:
‘Now that she was gone, I began to study her like a stranger, rooting around her belongings in an attempt to rediscover her, trying to bring her back to life in any way that I could.’ (p.168)

‘… we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintelligable to the other’s expectations, until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accomodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, 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.’ (p.169)

‘I wondered if the 10 percent she kept from the three of us who knew her best – my father, Nami, and me – had all been different, a pattern of deception that together we could reconstruct. I wondered if I could ever know all of her, what other threads she’d left behind to pull.’ (p.202)

Sampurna Saha 

As heartfelt and emotional this was ... I am just incredibly hungry and craving for food I have never had.

Midori Kobayashi

it feels v weird rating this memoir anything but 5 stars. believe me i stayed up all night yday sobbing every other chapter. the cultural and food descriptions mouth watering and the grief so personal yet so vivid. even tho i haven't experienced this particular experience (seeing some loved one die in front of you) but still it pained me to read it and honestly by the end it felt i almost lived those experience. the writing is a little disjointed at times but no critique for MZ's experiences is worth it bcs this feels more like a story more for herself than any reader. 

(heavy content warnings for death, cancer, abortion, infidelity etc- pls look them up before going into this one)

Jamie

The author describes in detail, the complex nature of her relationship with her mother throughout her childhood, her mother’s diagnosis, illness and death. I found those aspects of the book to be emotional, tender, relatable and well written. However, the other half of the book is filled with in-depth description of mostly Korean food and reading those had me zoning out quite frequently. Overall, a decent read but not at all what I was expecting. 

amara

Ivy X

"Crying in H Mart" got me crying on the plane. 

- "I could not even cry in his presence for fear he would take the moment over, pit his grief against mine in a competition of who loved her more, and who had more to lose." 

-"...it felt like a time to choose living over dying. She wanted the chance to say goodbye to her country and to her older sister."
- "Even as she was dying, my mother offered me solace, her instinct to nurture overwhelming any personal fear she might have felt but kept expertly hidden. She was the only person in the world who could tell me that things would all work out somehow. The eye of the storm, a calm witness to the wreckage spinning out into its end." 

- "I talked about how love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else's favor."

-"When you were a child, you always used to cling to me. Everywhere we went," my mother whispered, struggling to get the words out. "And now that you're older, here you are -- still clinging to me." 

- "To be a loving mother was to be known for a service, but to be a lovely mother was to possess a charm all your own."

Vishwa

I only finished this book because I felt obligated to (I just don't like leaving things incomplete) and it was a quick read. A solid 30% of the words are probably descriptions of Korean food, which my eyes started to glaze over.

Other than that, I did find some parts of this memoir either relatable (as a child of immigrants) or sparking reflection in my head (what if one of my parents died now?) etc, but the book itself was a bit too long winded for my liking. Probably therapeutic to the author, though, it seemed. Read it if you have time to kill, but imo not a top of the list type.

Kristen Claiborn

A few years ago, if you had suggested I would read (and enjoy) a bunch of memoirs, I would have openly gawked at you. I avoided memoirs like I avoid shellfish. I’m not allergic or anything, just…ew. Then I started following all these celebrity book lists, and I read more up-to-date popular titles, and it turns out a lot of people read memoirs. It’s absurd how many people write them, but seeing as how we keep reading them, I suppose it makes sense. 
	I have no idea who this woman is, even after reading this book. Apparently, she’s a musician? I have no clue. What I do know is that this woman is a very capable writer. I was completely mesmerized by her words, and I felt like I was right there with her in her H-Mart. The food was something most people can identify with too. So many of my own memories of loved ones revolves around food. Whether it’s a holiday or a favorite dinner my mom made when I was a kid. Zauner’s memories are that much more poignant because their food was something that made them unique, so she shared it almost exclusively with her mom during her life. It’s an endearing tale that I’m sincerely glad she shared with the world.

Jeannette Ordas

Really liked this book. Especially loved all the food descriptions and how honestly she writes about her relationship with her mother.

Ben Jenkins

Loved this book. I can’t even put into words how heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting this book is. 

Omar Fernandez &
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Omar Fernandez &Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Omar Fernandez &
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner