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“A poignant memoir about a mother’s love as told through Korean food. Losing a parent is one thing, but to also lose direct ties to one’s culture in the process is its own tragedy…In an attempt to honor and remember her umma, the author sought to replicate the flavors of her upbringing…Aptly, Zauner frames her story amid the aisles of H Mart, a place many Asian Americans will recognize, a setting that allows the author to situate her personal story as part of a broader conversation about diasporic culture, a powerful force that eludes ownership. The memoir will feel familiar to children of immigrants, whose complicated relationships to family are often paralleled by equally strenuous relationships with their food.”

– Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Written by Michelle Zauner
Published by Knopf

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.

Primary ISBN: 9780525657743
Publication Date: April 2021
Available As: Hardcover, Paperback, Audiobook, eBook
Memoir, Age 18 or older

Community Represented:

Themes: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting: United States (Eugene OR), South Korea (Seoul)

Character's Place in the Immigration Journey: Immigrant

Book Creator(s) Connection to the Community Represented: Own Voices/Lived Experience

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Inside the Book: Michelle Zauner

Source: Penguin Random House