Crying in H Mart is a memoir written by Michelle Zauner, dedicated to her late mother. Some may know her from the indie band, Japanese Breakfast. In this book, we follow Zauner’s experience growing up as a Korean-American with a complicated relationship with her Korean mother. Zauner talks about what it means to be living with an Asian parent who doesn’t show affection like the other white parents in America, how food plays an important role within Asian families, how it felt to have never-ending anxiety and the desperate measures her family took to fight death from taking away a family member. She portrays the feeling of realising that the most prominent person in your life is slowly fading away due to cancer, and the aftermath of losing them. This memoir is more than just grieving. It is a collection of raw emotions — reminiscence, relief, regret, and resonance for us with Asian backgrounds.

    Zauner definitely outdid herself with her writing in this extremely personal story of hers. The author’s metaphorical sentences can easily be mistaken as lyrics, showcasing her abilities as a songwriter. The simply-phrased sentences shined too, as they served to piece together the various scenarios in readers’ minds. Zauner touched on the feeling of losing a part of her identity — her Korean heritage, and the need to fill that void in her when her mother passed. She even had to rush to have her wedding within three weeks just to have her mother be there. Zauner is capable of describing all her feelings with such intensity that provokes relatability in readers, even though you may not necessarily have been through the things she did.

    All seemingly mundane things in life feel engaging and interesting under Zauner’s pen. Her writing pulls you in, makes you feel like you are in her shoes. Her pen is the bow and our heartstrings (and tear ducts) are just her instruments.

“The bitterness and spice of the vegetable perfectly married with the savory, salty taste of the sauce. It was a poetic combination, to reunite something in its raw form with its twice-dead cousin.” — Zauner refers to dipping a raw green pepper into ssamjang.

    Highlights of this memoir will certainly include all the detailed narrations about food. From how it felt to cook a taste of childhood by herself for the first time, to the way different dishes trigger different memories of hers, I was hungry most of the time while reading about the delicious smell and flavours of the food.

    A rare thing in all forms of autobiography— Zauner is not afraid to show readers the ugly side of her past actions and her family relationships. She touched on her experience being a rebellious teen—how often she would fight with her mother. She also wrote honestly about the ‘selfish’ thoughts and her fall-out with her father after her mother— the one who was holding the family together—left them.

    Uniquely, Zauner always finds unexpected ways to incorporate her sense of humour in this narration of hers, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself laughing aloud while reading a supposedly ‘serious’ part. The pacing is neither too fast nor too slow. The reading experience is like prying into someone’s secret journal. Some may finish it in one or two sittings. Some, like me, might need to take breaks in between sessions of reading it because of how relatable and ‘tear-baiting’ it is.

    My entire experience reading this is exactly as I’ve titled this article—‘Craving & Crying’. Passages devoted to Korean cuisine woven seamlessly with frank but touching sentences about life, death, hope and love. There was no other option for me; reading this book while sobbing into my takeout Jjajangmyeon was the only thing to do. Not going to lie, I definitely cried way more than one should while reading a book. Even now as I am typing this, I get this heaviness in my chest because I could see reflections of my mum and I in the book. It was almost as if the author took snippets of the relationship of my mum and I, and put them into words in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to. Most of us aren’t that fortunate to have an easy relationship with our parents. It can be difficult to talk about it truthfully, not to mention writing and publishing it for the world to read. So for me, Zauner’s words are empowering and comforting in countless ways. I honestly don’t think I’ve highlighted and tabbed a book this much before.

    This memoir is also somewhat a collection of life lessons and realisations. It’s normal for mothers and daughters to fight for an hour, then laugh together in the next hour. It’s normal to hold a grudge against a parent for not taking care of the family. It’s normal to only feel remorse after a tragic incident.

    Obviously I would absolutely recommend this book to everyone! I found out my mum left this book, which I had annotated in detail for her, on a pile of random things with a used cotton bud on top of it after I gave it to her to read. So…… let’s see if I can convince you to read it. I know some readers aren’t that interested in non-fiction books compared to fiction, but this book would be a great start to venture into the genre, if you are new to it. This is not your usual, unrealistic ‘how I became a millionaire’ kind of memoir. Everyone should consider picking this up, especially if you are the-eldest-daughter-in-an-Asian-family-who-carries-a-burden-to-do-well-in-life-with-a-love-hate-relationship-with-your-parents. Speaking from a friend’s experience, of course.