From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker
essay that shares the title of this book an unflinching powerful memoir about growing up
Korean American losing her mother and forging her own identity. 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.
