I saw this memoir on Liz’s bookshelf in French House, asked to borrow it sometime during Fall Quarter. Liz strongly recommended it and generously lent it to me. I started reading it on my flight from SFO to Korea, holding back tears even from its first few pages, and finished reading it on my second day back home in Seoul.
I would say that Crying in H Mart is a beautifully written memoir about Michelle Zauner/Japanese Breakfast’s mother, (the complexities and beauty of) their mother-daughter bond, loss, grief, and her identity as someone who is half-Korean.
Pages 150–153ish made me sob especially hard — this was the most candid description of witnessing and experiencing the death of a loved one that I’ve read so far.
Two takeaways from reading this:
- Don’t ever take family and family time for granted.
- I want to learn how to cook Korean food and eventually actually cook Korean food in the future.
I also just realized that Michelle’s mom passed when she was around the same age that my own mom was when her dad/my 외할아버지 passed. Too young, too soon. My mom sometimes talks about him in terms of the things he liked to eat or things he liked doing, but I don’t think I’ve heard her talk about what it was like for her to cope with the loss and grief of her dad’s passing — I can only imagine how tough and heartbreaking it must have been.
