Listeners of Japanese Breakfast, the musical project of Michelle Zauner, will not be surprised that this lyrically gifted and creative artist has now also dipped her feet into the literary space. Zauner’s memoir, Crying in H Mart, is a grief memoir in the style of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, but with Korean food and coming of age elements sprinkled in. Zauner was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and an American father, but moved to Oregon as a young child. Her mother was a dominating presence in her life: her strong aesthetic sense, her love of QVC beauty products, and the cuisine of her home country were constants through Zauner’s childhood. Throughout her childhood, Zauner and her mother visited family in Korea every summer, trips that Zauner recalls with a fondness for the family closeness, bustling city, and vibrant and sensuous Korean food. Food was a way that Zauner and her mother connected with their family abroad, and adventurous eating in Korean restaurants or at home because a vital part of their relationship, something that they shared privately.
When her mother is diagnosed with cancer at the young age of 56, Zauner decides to move home, leaving a waitressing job and a music career that wasn’t progressing as much as she had hoped in New York, and returning to Oregon to care for ailing mom. Zauner throws herself into taking care of this woman who only a couple of years ago was chastising her for sneaking out and missing school, in a sad and confusing reversal of care-taking responsibilities. Back home, she begins cooking for her mother, trying to bring her back to health with the food of her family. She watches as her mother loses her appetite, which makes her feel powerless and angry at the senselessness of this illness that is causing her mother to disappear in front of her eyes.
When her mother eventually passes, Zauner uses food to explore her grief. Food provides such a strong sense memory of her mother, or as Zauner writes, “you’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs.” Food is so central not only to her bond with her mother, but her connection to her Korean heritage. At one point Zauner writes, “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?”. This memoir is a fascinating and personal exploration of what it means to preserve culture and celebrate traditions inherited from previous generations. Zauner makes crucial connections between her love for her mother, food, and her Korean-ness, adding so many layers to the loss she feels after her mother’s death. The reader understands why she feels untethered from not only her parent who is gone, but her culture, and a huge part of her identity.
Zauner’s sense for food writing is incredible, and I absolutely would not recommend reading this one on an empty stomach! She includes lush sensory details about the Korean dishes her mother cooked for her, with incredible attention paid to texture, smell, and warmth. The sensory details only make the connection between food and family more strong, it adds a physical and sensory quality to Zauner’s love for her mother as well as her grief. Meditations on grief can feel so heavy, especially a narrative that involves a person losing a parent to illness, but Zauner manages to infuse her memoir with lightness and energy through food. I think this memoir feels so resonant to readers because of its attention to sensory details, as we all have attachments and sense memories to food from our childhood, and Zauner has given us her deeply personal take on that very universal phenomenon.
Crying in H Mart doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of death or grief, and avoids offering platitudes or encouragement. Zauner writes of her grief, “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.” The memoir leans into the ever-presence of this type of loss, the grief that is both always with you and can surprise you in the most inconvenient of places, like the aisle in H Mart. Its so fascinating to read about Zauner confronting that grief by cooking, and leaning into a creative process that allows her to inhabit her mother for a short time. This memoir is a gorgeous meditation on heritage and tradition, and a beautiful homage to the richness of inheriting a passion like cooking from a loved one. A really unique food memoir that I think will make creative souls feel especially seen.
Further Reading: This is Zauner’s first book, but definitely give her music a listen! The debut album she mentions in this memoir, Pschopomp, is fantastic, and she has a new album coming out this summer!