Crying in H Mart

The book grew out of a viral essay of the same name that appeared in the New Yorker. It's about growing up in Oregon with a white father and Korean mother. A mother whom Michelle lost to cancer when she was 25.

We see her mother succumbing to the cancer and Zauner navigating that time with her father. In that sense it is a novel exploring her grief, but for me it's the recollections of food that evoked such strong memories of my own. So much shared experience buried in the food. The miyeokguk served on birthdays, the bitter herbal remedies insisted upon, the foraging of banchan in an aunt's fridge, the quick comfort found in jjajangmyeon, the long unbroken apple peels. Even the discovery of Maangchi and her enthusiastic recipes for Korean food follow a familiar to me trajectory.

It is also Zauner discovering her own Koreanness that hit home. Recollections of Hangul Hakkyo, her pat Korean phrase to explain her lack of fluency, and growing up in a mostly white suburb. In writing a deeply personal book Zauner manages to evoke an incredible amount of resonant emotions. It's not going to hit the same way for everyone else but I couldn't help but love this read.

For a biting epilogue that shows how sharp her writing remains, read her essay in Harpers Bazaar (When My Mother Died, My Father Quickly Started a New Life. I Chose to Forgive Him) where she writes about how her father moved on after his wife's death by dating an Indonesian woman 7 years younger than Michelle herself.