Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

I stayed up all night to read + listen to this book, and I haven’t done that in a really long time. So, thank you, Michelle Zauner for this incredible read.

I’ve recently tried out Korean food (of course, not the entire length and breadth mentioned in this book), and the little I’ve tasted has amazed me by its simplicity in terms of the number of ingredients versus the intensity of the flavour profiles. I look forward to actually visiting Seoul and trying out some of the insanely delicious dishes mentioned by Michelle as an integral part of her childhood.

Briefly summarising the book may make it seem plain and ordinary. Michelle Zauner writes about her mother, her relationship with her mother, her mother’s Korean family, her Caucasian father who wasn’t an ideal role model, and the struggles of growing up as a Korean-American kid in Eugene, Oregon, USA, and finding (or not finding) true love across generations. The theme of this book is the grief of losing a loved one to cancer. How caretaking takes up unforeseeable space in the lives of everyone close to someone suffering from cancer. How old, unhealed wounds tend to crack open when faced with adversity. How love can restore some semblance of normalcy for a brief period.

What makes this otherwise unremarkable personal story to a best-seller level is the vividness of the narrative. It makes you feel like you’re in the Noryangjin Fish Market with Michelle, her mother and her aunts gleefully sucking wriggling octopus tentacles. The poetic quality of the descriptions of various food and ingredients in a Korean pantry that most readers would be unaware of displays an attention to detail that goes beyond those mentioned in a typical cookbook. An excerpt, to help you realise what I’m talking about:

At night my mother and I slept on a futon mattress in the living room, facing away from the glass sliding doors. I hated sleeping alone and relished the opportunity to sleep so close to her without the need for an excuse. At three a.m. we tossed and turned, tortured by jet lag. Eventually, my mother would turn and whisper, “Let’s go see what’s in Halmoni’s refrigerator.” At home, I was scolded if I got caught poking around the pantry past eight, but in Seoul, my mom was like a kid again, leading the campaign. Standing at the counter, we’d open every Tupperware container full of homemade banchan, and snack together in the blue dark of the humid kitchen. Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker. We’d giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking our soy sauce–stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean.”

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

Deep emotions and the authenticity of anecdotes expected from an introverted, artistic kid dominate the pages of this book. Listening to the audiobook narrated by the author herself helped me familiarise myself with the pronunciation of jjajangmyeon noodles and chonggak kimchi, as if I were walking through a food court in The H Mart and hearing vendors at stalls call out the names of their meticulously prepared dishes. It is rightly said that you can know a new culture through its food, and that in itself differentiates this book from just another memoir about a girl whose mother suffered from cancer. There’s also a lovely anecdote in this book about a puzzle that helps determine who you are as a person and what are your priorities in life, which I think I’m going to pop randomly into a conversation with my friends.

Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I was not raised in a household with many books or records. I was not exposed to fine art at a young age or taken to any museums or plays at established cultural institutions. My parents wouldn’t have known the names of authors I should read or foreign directors I should watch. I was not given an old edition of Catcher in the Rye as a preteen, copies of Rolling Stones records on vinyl, or
any kind of instructional material from the past that might help give me a leg up to cultural maturity. But my parents were worldly in their own ways. They had seen much of the world and had tasted what it had to offer. What they lacked in high culture, they made up for by spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhood was rich with flavor—blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table.

Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

I’d like to end this review by saying that it was an absolute pleasure getting to know about Michelle’s life and the life of the many women who shaped her into the person she is today. I’ll most certainly be revisiting this book before I try out more of Korean cuisine!