Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
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Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Memoir

Crying in H Mart

Debut

by Michelle Zauner

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Quick take

A vibrant memoir of heritage—cultural, culinary, and otherwise—rediscovered in the wake of a shattering loss.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, Well_Known

    Famous author

  • Illustrated icon, Family_Drama

    Family drama

  • Illustrated icon, Critically_Acclaimed

    Critically acclaimed

Synopsis

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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Get an early look from the first pages of Crying in H Mart.

Crying in H Mart

1

Crying in H Mart

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.

H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The H stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to “one arm full of groceries.” H Mart is where parachute kids flock to find the brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It’s where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, the beef and rice cake soup that brings in the New Year. It’s the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it’s the only place that truly understands how much garlic you’ll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle “ethnic” section in regular grocery stores. They don’t prop Goya beans next to bottles of sriracha here. Instead, you’ll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup. Or in the freezer section, holding a stack of dumpling skins, thinking of all the hours that Mom and I spent at the kitchen table folding minced pork and chives into the thin dough. Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?

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View all
Tell Me Everything
Somebody's Daughter
Win Me Something
Crying in H Mart
Beautiful Country
Damnation Spring
The Other Black Girl
Things We Lost to the Water
Libertie
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Memorial
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Transcendent Kingdom
The Death of Vivek Oji
Evicted
A Burning
The Sympathizer
Trick Mirror
A Gentleman in Moscow