Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
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Web ID: 12620457Emotional rollercoaster
Phenomenal, cried so hard I got a migraine, 67/10, hug your mom after reading
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Beautiful and relatable
This book will make you think twice about how people experience grief. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (one of Time’s 100 most influential people) has won the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Memoir & Autobiography, and is also a New York Times best seller. Michelle Zauner lived in Eugene, Oregon for most of her childhood and teen years. She later moved to Philadelphia where she worked as a waitress. While in Philadelphia she got a call from her mother that she was sick. She moved back to her hometown to take care of her mother. Her dad, while he still loves her mom, has many problems of his own. Her boyfriend Peter is always there for her throughout her grieving. She misses her family in Korea, who she used to see every other summer with her mother, but now only feels a sort of disconnectedness from them because she doesn’t speak fluent Korean. The purpose of this memoir is to show others about the confusing thing that is grief and how important relationships with your family members and the ones you love are and why you should cherish them. Although it doesn’t directly show it, there are underlying themes about how little time you truly have and how it can be gone before you think. The memoir begins with Zauner browsing through H Mart (A chain of supermarkets known for the Asian food it carries) and feeling the loss of her mother and describing her mother's love for food. She then continues to explain how her parents met and her life growing up with a strict mother and how she too grew to love food. Afterward, she tells about her teenage years and describes her moving back home and her mom’s caretaker. And last but not least her grieving process and how hard it was after losing her mother when she was still young. I enjoyed reading this book because while I have not experienced a lot of grief personally, it was an eye-opener to how ugly it is. Zauner was really blunt about it and didn’t shy away from the things she experienced after her mother's death and how some people never fully mourn and how the emptiness can become consuming and how she coped by connecting with her mother through food. Another aspect of this memoir that I loved was how Zauner showed that relationships (romantic and not) aren’t always as black and white as they seem. For example, she and her mother seemed like they had the perfect relationship, but they had problems and complicated feelings below the surface. Finally, I really liked how Zauner talks about connecting with those you’ve lost after their passing. For her, it was connecting to her mother through different Korean foods she cooked when she was healthy, which also made her feel connected to some of her family in Korea too. And I think it’s beautiful because we try to connect with our loved ones even in life through things both parties have in common. Painting, reading, cooking, knitting, swimming, anything at all, and if someone you love loves it, you feel connected to them. This book is captivating because of its honesty, and its rawness. It’s symbolic of how beautiful and ugly the world is, and how hard it is to raise a human. This book reminds me a lot of Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon becuase of the complicated mother-daughter relationship portrayed and the encompassing fear of losing someone present throughout the book. I think anybody who has recently experienced losing someone close to them would be interested in this book because of its relatability. I also think people who are really invested in food would be interested because of its connections to food and the connections people in this book have through/ because of food. A third party I think would be interested in this memoir is young adults because Zauner talks a lot about her teen years or anyone who’s aspiring to be a musician like she was.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Heart-wrenchingly beautiful
Zauner poured her whole heart into this book, where she portrayed Korean culture and how she compensated her grief with her cultural food. Holding back tears while gliding over every single line that are just rich with feeling. She encapsulated the true relationship between a mother and daughter. Displaying the bad and the good, but showing that when it comes to the end she still clings onto her mother like she used to as a child. This book just perfectly portrays Korean culture tied with struggling with your own life, but having to stay strong for family. Everybody should read this book no matter what.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
This book has hit me like no book in my life.
This is hard to explain. I am also Half Korean and Half White raised by my Korean Mother. I thought this book was a niche audience book but it touches and connects people through memory, love, loss and grief for their loved ones. The commonality of struggles of youth, untamed ambition and independence, the yearning for return of fond happier memories as we become older and realize our losses. The difference here for me as part of the niche audience is the specific cultural and ethnic aspects of being a second generation mixed race Korean Amerasian. I shared much of her problems with identity as a mixed race Korean. Many people with immigrant parents can relate to this story but this story was so specific for me. Certain aspects of the Korean Culture, some language involved but most of all……the food. The food is extremely important to any child of a mother born and raised in Korea. We are raised with it and bond with our families and Korean friends with it. Korean Food is extremely important socially. Her analogies with it and use of it in her grief to connect with better memories to recover from trauma were a genius part of her writing but also rang true for me. Where was this author for me 20 years ago? I NEVER had a book impact my life like this one has. I had a falling out with my Korean Mother and my sister and stopped communicating with them for two years until just this past year before I read the book. After reading the book it made all my grievances seem so petty in the grand scheme of things in life and had so many deep regrets. I had to call my mom and sister and tell them how much I loved and appreciated them. I sent them the book and now they understand and we’re so much closer because of it. I spent 8 years in the Army, 1 tour as an Army ER Nurse in Iraq, 2,5 years in Oncology and over 20 in ER and I thought I was tough…….but I cried like a baby through this book. I have sent this book to numerous friends. I couldn’t stop talking about this book and her music as well it was so good. Give the book to someone who may appreciate the book as a gift. A mother and daughter having trouble with eachother? Give the daughter the book first and see if anything changes. Friend’s mother passed of a terminal illness? This book can be very cathartic and comforting in the sharing of grief and memories. This book hit me like no other in my life.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
A beautiful book that breaks and warms your heart
I bought this book summer 2021 but finally read it January of 2022, and I am so glad I did. I was drawn to the vivid details Michelle's upbringing, as well as her efforts and grief from the death of her mother. I absolutely fell in love with this story. Definitely recommend!
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Good Feature
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
An extremely powerful and heartwrenching memoir
This is the first non-fiction book I've willing read on my own accord and finished in my entire lifetime. I've tried picking up a few non-fiction books before, but none of them were able to capture my attention like Zauner's did. Her memoir, a story of her mother's life and passing at the young age of 56, is filled with raw moments of grief, anger, and heartbreak so palpable it was like I could feel it through the page. I'm honestly at a loss for words to describe how this book made me feel. For starters, Zauner is one of the most talented writers I've ever seen - she articulates emotion better than any author I've read before. The pain, the grief, the sense of "what do I do now?" - I felt all of it too. Full disclosure, I cried a lot (and laughed a lot, surprisingly) when reading this book. It felt like I had opened a door into her memories and was there experiencing what she went through, every step of the way - a testament to the strength of her writing. Zauner describes the human experience as being split into two parts - one before you lose a parent, and one after, and the truth and sincerity behind her words forced me to confront the tragic fact that one day I will cross that threshold, and I will know exactly what she felt in those moments. This is an extremely touching read full of love and grief and I would absolutely recommend it.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
The grieving process. And food. And regrets.
Zauner’s memoir focuses on a profoundly sad event in her life—her mother’s death from cancer at the age of 56. As a self-described “rotten” kid, Zauner (whose mother was Korean and whose father is Caucasian) resented her mother and rebelled in the not atypical ways that teenagers rebel (I’m pretty sure every adolescent experiences at least a brief phase when they hate their parents). As she witnesses her mother’s declining health and feels powerless to do anything to prevent her inevitable demise, Zauner proceeds through every stage of the grieving process, from denial through acceptance. Notable for Zauner’s glib and honest writing style and the detailed descriptions of Korean cuisine, Crying in H Mart chronicles both the near-universal sorrow we are all likely to experience when a parent dies—especially if the parent dies young—as well as the unique manifestations of grief that a biracial child or an especially headstrong child (like Zauner) might face.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com