Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Zauner’s book is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. The devastation of losing a mother, trying to piece together who that woman was, intense memories around the smells and tastes of food, coming of age with parents who are far from perfect, told all with wisdom, humor, and incredible honesty – Crying in H Mart is filled with gorgeous language and succinct powerful descriptions, you will finish it and want to start reading all over again.

About Crying in H Mart:

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.

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