Today’s post was written by Ron Lewis, acquisitions librarian for the William H. Hannon Library. You can find “Crying in H Mart” in our general collections.
As a longtime fan of Japanese Breakfast, I was already familiar with Michelle Zauner’s ability to capture emotion through sound—the way she weaves vulnerability, nostalgia, and beauty into her music. Her memoir “Crying in H Mart” recounts her mother’s terminal illness and death, as well as the complex bond between them. It also shows how food and family rituals anchor her sense of self and cultural roots amid mourning. Reading it felt like experiencing the same themes through a different medium. H Mart, a popular Korean-American grocery chain where she reconnects with the smells, tastes, and textures of her childhood, becomes both a symbol of heritage and a space for reflection. The account deepens the themes I’ve sensed in her songs, highlighting the intricate mother-daughter relationship and the longing for closeness that lingers after a parent’s passing. While her music captures emotion through atmosphere and restraint, the memoir is more visceral, grounding grief in the physical realities of the body, food, and loss. Her music lets you feel grief; the memoir makes you live inside it.
I am drawn to memoirs because they convey emotional truth while acknowledging the uncertainty of memory. Zauner’s work exemplifies this: she shows how absence, distance, and maturity reshape how childhood, family conflict, and personal identity are recalled. Moments that once felt confusing or unbearable gain new meaning in retrospect. Her storytelling is intimate and vivid—raw yet reflective. It captures the delicacy of remembering and the intensity of feeling, inviting readers to question their own reflections.
Reading the book reminded me of a night my wife and I went to see Japanese Breakfast in San Diego, just as live shows were returning after the pandemic. The soft evening, dinner on the patio, and light rain have faded, but the sense of calm, anticipation, and collective joy lingers. Inside, the hum of people together after months apart created a fragile yet immense connection. What I remember most isn’t the concert but the surrounding moments—the atmosphere, textures, and sensations. Similarly, Zauner’s portrayal of these experiences is not a meticulous record. The events may seem perfectly detailed, but they are filtered through her memory—shaped by reflection, emotion, and significance. Instead, the text tenderly renders their meaning, capturing emotional truth even when details blur.
At its core, the memoir explores absence and what vanishes when a parent serves as the primary bridge to cultural heritage. For her, a Korean American raised by a Caucasian father and a Korean mother, her access to Korean traditions came mostly through her mother. After her death, that link became precarious. Cultural knowledge, embedded in everyday practices rather than formal instruction, can suddenly feel unreachable. Selfhood, then, is not inherited; it must be actively sustained.
Food is the work’s most consistent emotional language. Her mother expresses care through meals prepared with intention and familiarity, even amid criticism and pressure. After her mother’s death, H Mart becomes a space where cultural fluency is restored through sensory engagement. Touching ingredients, recognizing brands, and preparing comforting dishes reconnect Zauner with her identity. They also evoke echoes of childhood snacks, textures, and shared rituals, reinforcing her cultural memory. These recollections, emotionally charged and blurred between fact and feeling, demonstrate how sentiment can persist even as details fade.
Her depiction of her mother complicates conventional ideas of parental love. Affection often manifests as control, perfectionism, and relentless pressure, particularly around appearance and achievement. As a child, this love feels overwhelming, but she later reinterprets it as fear, sacrifice, and care. Adolescence brings distance and resentment. The desire for independence often turns into rejection, making leaving home—especially for college—feel like escape. The tragedy of this separation becomes clear in hindsight, as illness shortens the time available for reconciliation. Caregiving brings exhaustion, guilt, and trauma, shaping how experiences are remembered and processed.
Zauner occasionally touches on the early stages of her musical journey, though the memoir does not dwell on her career. Instead, it centers on her relationship with her mother and the ways her upbringing shaped who she became. Only after her mother’s death does her music gain wider recognition. This suggests that profound personal loss can catalyze focus, creativity, and drive without reducing grief to mere motivation.
The narrative also examines growing up mixed-race in America. She navigates racism, alienation, and an early desire for whiteness alongside uncertainty about belonging or being “Korean enough.” These tensions complicate self-perception, showing how identity is shaped not only by heritage but also by absence—by what is lost, inaccessible, or unspoken.
Ultimately, “Crying in H Mart” is more than a reflection on grief. It is about selfhood, love, and the act of remembering—and how these elements are never fixed but constantly evolving. As both a reader and a fan of Zauner’s music, I found it profoundly moving to see how she transforms memory, absence, and cultural heritage into art that feels deeply human. This work rewards readers interested in family, tradition, and the ways loss shapes personal identity.
(photo credit: Adelle Baptiste)