Crying In H Mart is a heartfelt memoir by musician and writer, Michelle Zauner, chronicling her relationship with her mother with a primary focus on her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and eventual death. Zauner walks us through a close relationship she shared with her mother as a child, followed by a tumultuous bond in her adolescent years, eventually coming back to sharing a close relationship in her early 20’s.
Crying In H Mart is a heartfelt memoir by musician and writer, Michelle Zauner, chronicling her relationship with her mother with a primary focus on her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and eventual death.
Zauner was 25 years old when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. So, for the majority of the book, we see her taking care of her mother, going into excruciating detail about the agency and dignity that cancer takes away from a person and the number of sacrifices, emotional and physical, the caretaker(s) must make to be there for their loved one.
Cancer and messy relationships
We all know how chemotherapy takes so much away from a person and how cancer can be so horrible that even the word ‘cancerous’ is now more than just a medical term. But to read in detail about the whole process of the lost dignity is something entirely else. In Crying In H Mart, we watch Zauner’s headstrong mother wither away right in front of us; we see her father break down time and time again, crying how he cannot keep going like this; we see her mother fall apart when she sees herself without hair for the first time and Michelle consoles her by saying, ‘it’s just hair, it’ll grow back’. At one point, Michelle’s father says to her, ‘I know you wish it was me in her place. I wish that too’, and Michelle admits in the book that in her hearts of heart, she does wish that.
Filled with messy details and heartbreaking admissions, Crying In H Mart is a memoir that does not shy away from confronting the ugliness of relationships. There are chapters that document her strained relationship with her mother during her adolescent years where both say some truly horrible things to each other and lash out in ways that feels unforgivable were it was any other relationship, but it’s the mending process that begins in her 20’s that feels like such a lost opportunity once her mother is taken away from her by cancer.
Zauner’s mother always used to tell her, ‘Never give 100% to anyone. Keep at least 10% to yourself.’ So, after her mother’s death, we see Michelle grappling with the fact that she didn’t completely know her mother and how now she never will. She realises how her mother kept 10% to herself from every relationship in her life, and while talking to family can help create a fuller picture of her mother, there are still parts of her she’ll never know. It is definitely a difficult thing to process after the death of a loved one. The need to foster their memory is so intense that one can’t help but find themselves wanting to know every single molecule of that person.
Food as emotion in Crying In H Mart
Having said that, arguably, the biggest character in Crying In H Mart is Korean food. The book even starts with the author going to H Mart – an Asian superstore – to feel a connection to her mom and in turn, her Korean heritage. Walking through the many aisles of the superstore, we find ourselves walking alongside her and the memories she shared with her mother. ‘I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families. How many are thinking of them as they bring their trays back from the different stalls. If they’re eating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food. Which ones are like me, missing the people who are gone from their lives forever?’ writes Zauner.
After her mother goes through chemotherapy, she describes the process of cooking for her as a form of role reversal. ‘That cooking my mother’s food had come to represent an absolute role reversal, a role I was meant to fill. That food was an unspoken language between us, that it had come to symbolize our return to each other, our bonding, our common ground.’
The detail with which Zauner writes about Korean food in Crying In H Mart almost makes readers feel like they are reading a book by a food critic or a food expert. Capturing the layers and nuances of a dish, she makes one hungry for dishes they’ve never even seen or heard of. There are long paragraphs in almost every chapter dedicated to capturing the process of cooking or eating a dish in the minutest of detail so that the reader feels the experience on a sensory level.
There are long paragraphs in almost every chapter dedicated to capturing the process of cooking or eating a dish in the minutest of detail so that the reader feels the experience on a sensory level.
The lay reader goes into Crying In H Mart not knowing anything about the author. All they know about the book is that it is a memoir that delves into the author’s mother’s death and examines her relationship with her mother. Readers who are interacting with any of Michelle Zauner’s works for the first time, are usually unaware of the fact that she was musician on the rise by the time her memoir was published.
In fact, they might be a little surprised to learn that she worked with music because her writing was so literary in nature that one would be convinced she is an experienced writer who probably wrote a bunch of essays for a living. In retrospect, the reader would understand her being a musician made complete sense because there’s a rhythm to her writing that only a lyricist or a poet could have. Even her sentence constructions are full of music, like she was enjoying the essence of language and playing around with different words.
Michelle Zauner’s writing has been a revelation for admirers of her music and her literature. Zauner’s music for Japanese Breakfast, the band she founded and now plays in, just like her book, is very emotional and readers are bound to be found swimming in that emotion for some time after putting down their copies of Crying In H Mart.
