Selected Book: "Crying in H Mart" by Michelle Zauner
Crying in H Mart is a vibrant and sensory memoir exploring self-discovery, grief, and Korean-American culture through the celebratory lens of food and family. Through a series of personal essays, Michelle Zauner recounts growing up as one of a few Asian-Americans in her Oregon town and reconnecting with her Korean identity as a young adult. When she moves home at 25 to care for her mother, who is facing terminal cancer, food becomes a vital language of love, memory, and cultural heritage. The book chronicles her coming of age and complex family dynamics, showing how she navigates the profound grief of a parent’s illness and death by embracing the traditions that define her.
Zauner’s debut book spent 60 weeks on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list. The book received a 2022 American Book Award and the 2021 Goodreads Choice Award for Memoir & Autobiography. It was also named a top book of the year by numerous publications, including TIME, The Atlantic, and Entertainment Weekly.
Praise for the Book
“Zauner has written a book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music. She seamlessly blends stories of food and memory, sumptuousness and grief, to weave a complex narrative of loyalty and loss.”—The New Yorker
“The memoir imparts a sense of love which compels me beyond the point of recognizing my own mother in Zauner’s. Rather, it leaves me in awe of how Zauner has also drawn me into mourning the death of her mother Chongmi”—The Androit Journal
"Crying in H Mart, stood out to me as a representation of grief that I could relate to — one that doesn't reach for silver linings, but illuminates the unending nature of loss"—NPR
“I never thought a book could have me rushing to the pantry for snacks one moment and ugly-crying the next, but here we are.”—The New York Times
“Crying in H Mart carries on the legacy of Michelle Zauner’s mother, and in doing so achieves what the greatest works of creative nonfiction strive to do: the writer transforms the wreckage, and is herself transformed in the process.”—LA Review of Books
“Crying in H Mart is a wonder: a beautiful, deeply moving coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, love and grief, food and identity. It blew me away, even as it broke my heart.”—Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
“I read Crying in H Mart with my heart in my throat. In this beautifully written memoir, Michelle Zauner has created a gripping, sensuous portrait of an indelible mother-daughter bond that hits all the notes: love, friction, loyalty, grief. All mothers and daughters will recognize themselves—and each other—in these pages.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
“A warm and wholehearted work of literature, an honest and detailed account of grief over time, studded with moments of hope, humor, beauty, and clear-eyed observation. Not to be missed.”—Sarah Neilson, The Seattle Times
“Zauner’s storytelling is impeccable. Memories are rendered with a rich immediacy, as if bathed in a golden light…The healing, connective power of food reverberates in nearly every chapter, [in] sensuous descriptions…Heartfelt, searching…Wise.”—Taylor Moore, AV Club
“Profound, timely…Refreshingly candid…Zauner brings dish after dish to life on the page in a rich broth of delectable details [and] offers remarkably prescient observations about otherness from the perspective of the Korean American experience.” —Zack Ruskin, San Francisco Chronicle
“What Crying in H Mart reveals is that in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself”—Kristen Martin, NPR
“The book’s descriptions of jjigae, tteokbokki, and other Korean delicacies stand out as tokens of the deep, all-encompassing love between Zauner and her mother. Zauner's frankness around death feels like an unexpected yet deeply necessary gift.”—Vogue
Table of Contents
1. Crying in H Mart
2. Save Your Tears
3. Double Lid
4. New York Style
5. Where's the Wine?
6. Dark Matter
7. Medicine
8. Unni
9. Where Are We Going?
10. Living and Dying
11. What Procellous Awesomeness Does Not in You Abound?
12. Law and Order
13. A Heavy Hand
14. Lovely
15. My Heart Will Go On
16. Jatjuk
17. Little Axe
18. Maangchi and Me
19. Kimchi Fridge
20. Coffee Hanjan