Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

69 reviews

kmae314's review

emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

3.5 stars

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness and Grief

Moderate: Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Child abuse, Toxic relationship, and Alcoholism

emilyharmonica's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racism, Infidelity, Alcohol, Excrement, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Emotional abuse, Vomit, Cancer, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Medical content, Grief, Drug use, and Abortion

ahhhreadzombiez's review

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

The way that Michelle weaves her wonderful story telling and vivid imagery is impeccable. Her music reflects her grief and her love of food binds her together with her love for her mother, her culture, and the struggles she’s gone through to become the person she is today. Fantastic read about grief and loss and newfound love and finding yourself.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Grief, and Racism

crieraylas's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Cancer, Grief, Death, Chronic illness, Racism, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Medical trauma, Addiction, Car accident, and Alcoholism

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Cursing, Vomit, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Body shaming, and Eating disorder

Minor: Infidelity, Violence, and Abortion

dafni's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Cancer, and Grief

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Mental illness

Minor: Racism and Addiction

_annika__'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

Overall this is a good book, the writing is good, her story is emotional, evocative, and entirely relatable for anyone who has experienced familial grief and terminal illness.

The issue I have with this book is personal, but perhaps relatable to anyone from a small town - I almost had to put the book down because I couldn’t stand the author continuously calling Eugene, Oregon (second biggest city in the state, a major PAC12 college town, an hour away from Portland) small, boring, and dull. Almost every single person I’ve met that’s lived in a <10,000 person town (and bigger, honestly) would KILL to be in Eugene. If the author would have said “I hated growing up in Eugene” I could’ve moved on, but she seemed to hate it specifically because it’s “small” and because there was “nothing to do.”

Every kid that’s suffered growing up in a 3,000 person town in the middle of a corn field somewhere in the Midwest - where 99.99% of the population is white and so strictly religious they unironically call Halloween “the devil’s holiday” and avoid you like the plague if you don’t go to their same church (imagine if you don’t go to church at all, and they repeatedly egg your house for it) - would have likely cut off a finger or two to grow up in Eugene or anywhere near it. I’m hoping the author bemoaned her adolescence in such a “small town” for dramatic effect and that she didn’t actually feel that strongly about it.

I understand teenage angst and depression and would have been more understanding if that was the main reason for feeling the way she did growing up, since most teens experience those feelings and at least at the time, likely no matter where you live, we feel like we don’t belong and we hate it there. But the amount of those feelings that she blamed specifically on the “small dull Pacific Northwest town” she lived in personally made my eye twitch. Growing up in a larger, modern, and progressive college town (often rated one of the most progressive cities in the entire U.S.) would be a privilege to sooo many.

Since the reader knows she’s writing this post-adolescence I was waiting for her to correct how she felt about this small town with “nothing to do” (aside from going to record stores, go vintage clothes shopping, get specialty Korean ingredients from a local market, and see Modest Mouse - just to name a few). Again, I acknowledge this as a personal issue taken with the book, but I assume most people that grew up in rural or small towns would struggle and also feel that a large part of the author’s adolescence and story is unreachable and I relatable because of this as well.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death of parent, Grief, Medical content, Terminal illness, Car accident, Death, and Chronic illness

Moderate: Drug use, Emotional abuse, Bullying, Alcohol, Body shaming, Panic attacks/disorders, Infidelity, Abortion, Addiction, and Alcoholism

annareads97's review

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

I was looking forward to reading this book for quite some time, and while it was not entirely what I expected, I very much enjoyed it. Michelle beautifully describes her complex relationship with her mother, with her Korean heritage, with grief, with love, and all of it is intricately woven into her relationship with the Asian comfort foods she grew up eating. I would call this a must read for anyone who grew up feeling caught between two identities, who is grieving the loss of a parent with whom they had a complicated relationship, or who simply wants to learn more about Asian American culture. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Cancer, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness

Minor: Emotional abuse, Drug use, Car accident, and Alcoholism

franksfiction's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

 

 * This is my opinion; I encourage readers to read anything they want. * 

I truly don’t know how to rate this book. It’s a weird feeling, anyway, writing a review on someone writing about their own life. I’ve heard many good things about “Crying in H Mart” that I wanted to read myself. 

I enjoyed the writing style. I saw some reviewers say it wasn’t written well, but I thought the personalness and vulnerability Zauner’s writing has to offer were great. If you have lost your mother, this will be a challenging and potentially triggering book to read. The biggest issue I have with rating this book is Michelle’s mother. In my opinion, she’s awful and downright abusive. Any of my Korean friends I’ve made, though, their mothers have treated their children similarly (but not to the point that Michelle’s mother gets to). 

I read some reviews saying that this book felt more like a therapy exercise for Zauner, a cathartic experience not meant for millions of people to read, and I agree. I also don’t know what to say about the course the book decides to take. I don’t know what it is, but it feels wrong to rate this book, and I hope Michelle Zauner is doing amazing. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Cancer, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, and Death

bdunks's review against another edition

The pace is very slow, and the mom is terribly mean to the daughter and she tries to justify it a lot, and I got bored 

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Emotional abuse

filisia's review

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

A very beautiful and heartbreaking memoir

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death of parent, and Death

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Body shaming