Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

65 reviews

crieraylas's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

_annika__'s review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

michae1a's review

Go to review page

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

4.5⭐️ this book has a special place in my heart and I’m gonna carry it with me. so much raw emotion 🥺 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

daniofthewood's review

Go to review page

hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

kaylaswhitmore's review

Go to review page

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I may just be biased, since I am also a Korean-American woman who grew up in Eugene, Oregon…but this memoir is certainly a gift to all who read it, and especially children of Asian immigrants. Words can’t quite describe the bizarre, surreal experience I had reading Michelle’s recollections. In between reeling emotionally from the similarities between her mother and my own, I would find myself blinking as familiar staples of my Eugene hometown popped up on every other page. Though my childhood and relationship to my mother is still quite different from Michelle’s, there were still so many things that struck me as familiar—like a funhouse mirror. Her use of emotion to paint such vivid pictures of the intangible truly drew me in and held me from the very first chapter. Someday, when the ache of her loss and the fear of losing my own mother fades, I will return to this book and reread it anew. For now, I’ll sit here in silence for a bit and cry lol.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

filisia's review

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

A very beautiful and heartbreaking memoir

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

spaceykaysee's review

Go to review page

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

edencameron's review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

isareader's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

A heartbreaking yet informative memoir from Zauner that touches on culture, identity, grief, and caregiving. I found her descriptions of how unconditionally and unapologetically she showed love to her mom and vice versa so touching, tearing up multiple times. I sometimes struggled to understand the repetition of the detailed descriptions of food and some moments that felt a little untied to thoughts, but I will remember this book for a long time!

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

booksanna's review

Go to review page

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

I will preface this review by saying that memoirs are not typically my repertoire, yet this book dragged me out of a severe case of a reading slump. Firstly, the author’s beautiful writing provides soothing comforting and ever so meaningful story of her life. I especially enjoyed how she blended food with other themes of her life. As an immigrant myself, this book was a deep relieving sign of breath, and a nice warming cup of soup. For a book with only 200 pages, it could not have been more meaningfully written. The author’s eloquent writing captivated my mind and my mouth water with all of the appealing descriptions of foods. The story of overcoming grief and overcoming disassociation with your culture truly inspired deep thought in me. This book was truly wonderful, and I am so happy that I gave a chance. You should too. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings