Crying in H Mart

In this exquisite story of family food grief and endurance Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer songwriter and guitarist. With humour and heart she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid 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 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 pancreatic 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 lyrical and honest Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish share and reread.