Bayou Pages | “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner

review by Meredith McKinnie

“Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding with a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.”

Michelle Zauner’s meditation on grief comes in the form of a love letter to her deceased mother. Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, Zauner resented her Korean heritage and her Korean mother’s means of parenting her only child. Zauner writes, “Hers was tougher than tough love. It was brutal, industrial strength. A sinewy love that never gave way to an inch of weakness.” Intent on defining herself outside of society’s assumptions, Zauner rejects the traditional path of academic success and immerses herself in music writing and life on the road. The unsurprising response to love wrapped in hard leather speaks to an only child searching for an identity without a sibling for comparison. When her mother Chongmi develops cancer in her early 50s, Zauner returns home to care for Chongmi, intent on discovering the woman who devoted her life to her daughter’s well-being before her untimely and painful death. 

Zauner writes with a lyrical cadence that parallels the experience of growth, weaving humor and heartbreak into each chapter. Though I appreciate when a novel can wreck me, reduce me to tears with its candid portrayal of love and loss, I also admire the skill in a novel that doesn’t have to, instead relying on truth-telling absent overt emotional appeals. Zauner threads the needle from both ends, some sections displaying radical restraint and others marinating in the untethered abyss of grief. Zauner’s point of connection is food, a staple of her Korean identity and a symbol of her mother’s love. H Mart refers to Korean-American grocery stores; the smells and tastes take Zauner back to her mother’s kitchen. She remembers her mother through the idiosyncrasies that encapsulated her existence, the odd quirks that define us in relation to others. A compelling component to Zauner’s memoir is experiencing grief in relative isolation, having no sibling with which to reminisce and a father who runs from emotional overtures. Zauner provides readers another lens through which we can examine loss, through the complicated web of identity and self-discovery. 

Alongside the critical acclaim for Crying in H Mart, Zauner is known as the lead vocalist for the alternative pop band Japanese Breakfast. 

“Lovely was an adjective my mother adored. She felt it encompassed an ideal beauty and ardor. It felt a fitting epigraph. To be a loving mother was to be known for a service, but to be a lovely mother was to possess a charm all her own.”