Erica’s Experience
Title: Crying in H Mart
Author: Michelle Zauner
Genre: Memoir
Page Count: 416
Publication Date: April 20, 2021
Interested? Buy Crying in H Mart here
Trigger Warning: This book is about cancer and the premature death of a parent and may be triggering to some readers.
Review
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner is a memoir about the most harrowing four months of her life. At 25, she moved home to help care for her mother who was dying from an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer. The book not only covers those four months in heartbreaking detail, but dives into the aftermath following her mother’s death where Zauner faces her own grief and finding herself as a Korean American after loosing the guiding light into her Korean roots.
While I am not the daughter of an immigrant, I know all too well the relationship Michelle had with her mother, because it’s the one I have with mine. As a child, I idolized my mom; always wanting to make her happy, even though my lack of cleaning abilities and overly sensitive demeanor made me feel like I never could. Then there was our volatile relationship in my teens when all we ever seemed to do was fight. My mother and I are both similar and different at the same time – stubborn and independent to a fault, with my mother’s mind fueled by logic and mine by emotion. Very much like Michelle and her own mother, it lead to us aggressively butting heads until I moved out and went away to college.
It wasn’t until about the time I hit 25, when I had officially moved away from Missouri and was finding my own way that we truly started to develop a more mature respect for each other. It’s the same exact timing Michelle faces when she finds out her mother has pancreatic cancer. Knowing this, I can only say that fate dealt Michelle and her mother a sadistic hand when it forced them to mend the wounds only a mother and daughter can create over 18 years in the span of four months. People deserve a life time to work through their shit with their moms, but cancer doesn’t give a fuck about what people deserve.
There’s a quote that has rolled around in my head since finishing this book that may be my favorite passage I’ve read in 2023 so far:
” “I’ve just never met someone like you,” as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half of me.”
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
It’s such an odd concept when you think about it, that your parents are learning about you at the same time you are. Seeing it written out in this book was like finding a puzzle piece I had been missing for such a long time. It’s an answer months of therapy hasn’t given me (even though my therapist has said the same thing in a lot of different ways). This phrasing clicked and it brought me my own personal peace that I can only thank Zauner for giving me.
There’s also something so relatable in the way Zauner confronts her grief through cooking, turning to the tastes and smells of Korea that bring back memories of her mother. Cuisine in and of itself is a love language that we all speak. Zauner’s obsession with mastering Korean dishes after her mother’s passing; finding that way to remain connected with someone that is gone, is something we all do.
It’s like the pork and sauerkraut my grandma use to make every Christmas Eve because her Czech parents insisted it was good luck for the new year or the horseradish beets we eat at Easter. Then there’s Aunt Mable’s sugar cookies that my dad insists are good still, but not as good as the originals. And that’s the battle we all face – trying to recreate the moments we can never really get back through other senses.
Zauner’s story and others like it are what make me hate people who say food is simply fuel. Food is so much more than that. Food is a time traveler, a translator, a therapist, and a doctor. It’s a hug from a grandma that’s long since passed or the loving motherly scolding for adding too much salt, even if it’s only inside your head. It’s a universal connection we can all understand like music and poetry. It’s magic.
If you decide to read Crying in H Mart (which I highly encourage you to do) consider making it an immersive experience. Eat some of the Korean dishes Zauner learns to make and listen to her first album Psychopomp (which she wrote shortly after her mother’s passing) while you read.
You can purchase Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner here.
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