I’m not one to rank various types and genres of books from best to worst, but there’s something about a wonderfully executed memoir that is difficult to top. I consider the first book I fell in love with to be the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and after reading Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, I was taken back to being 15 again and discovering how transcendent memoirs can be. Crying in H Mart is a tender tribute to Zauner’s late mother. In this memoir, Zauner explores her relationship with her mother throughout her life — their arguments, the several times they found a mutual understanding, and especially her mother’s cooking.
It feels a bit odd to review someone’s memories and personal reflections, but Zauner does such an excellent job at letting us into her life that her mother feels like a real person. I feel like I’ve lived through Zauner’s college years, her band gigs, and her waitressing jobs; I feel like I’ve mourned with her. The entire book is wildly intimate, and I loved it. Her writing on grief is heartbreaking and hard to forget, with lines like, “Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I’m colliding into a wall that won’t give. There’s no escape, just a hard wall that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.”
I feel that Zauner’s goal for this book is to honour her mother in the most honest way possible. She doesn’t shy away from telling the reader about the ways her mother made her angry, or how she acted out during her rebellious teen years to spite her mother. Zauner is very genuine in explaining how she and her mother often had a chasm inbetween their relationship that only began to grow stronger once her mother was diagnosed with cancer and realized their time was limited. But what anchors all of Zauner’s memories together is the food her mother made.
Remember Marshall’s monologue about the perfect burger in How I Met Your Mother? Think of that intricate level of detail and passion toward food in all of Zauner’s descriptions of her mother’s homemade Korean meals. Not only did my heart break for the pain Zauner feels as she remembers how her mother loved others through food, but my mouth watered for all of the Korean dishes she so eloquently describes. Zauner discusses how her mother showed love and care to her family, friends, and neighbours by remembering how spicy everyone liked their food, which ingredients were each person’s favourite, which meals made who the most happy, and what dish to make for when someone was going through a hard time. Her mother was not always a compassionate person to Zauner (often saying to Zauner when she cried “Stop crying. Save your tears for when your mother dies.”) but through her cooking, her mother showed her affection.
Zauner has debuted an incredibly memorable book with enough beautiful emotion to haunt you. Her language is magnificent and her ability to simply express her feelings is astonishing. If you’re feeling lonely these days as we all socially distance, I highly recommend this book to make you feel connected to others.
