A review by dawndeydusk
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

emotional medium-paced

4.75

I rewrote the intro sentence to this review a handful of times, and every time I have had to delete It because it felt like tearing my chest open and showing you my heart. I cannot do that just yet. But this book means a world to me, especially at this moment. There's so much to pull from, though one part that sticks out to me is Zauner's remorse and overcompensation, trying to be 'good,' whatever that even means. She doesn't shy away from an ugly truth. I respect this deeply. This work is going to ferment in my mind for a while.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts in the meantime:

Which ones weren't able to fly back home this year, or for the past ten years? (8)

I could never be of both worlds, only half in and half out, waiting to be ejected at will by someone with greater claim than me. Someone full. Someone whole. (107)

If we always had something to look forward to, we could trick this disease...Come back when we're not so busy. (145)

..."You know what I realized? I've just never met someone like you..." It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me...My mother had struggled to understand me just as I had struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line--generational, cultural, liguistic--we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us unintilligible to the other's expectations...(169)

Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things. The knowledge left unrecorded died with her. What remained were documents and my memories, and now it was up to me to make sense of myself, aided by the sight she left behind. How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist. (223)