A review by startjpw23
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

The memoir is centered around the loss of Michelle Zauner's mother. Michelle writes about her youth, her teen years, and her early adult years. She talks about the illness that led to her mother's passing and how she coped with the passing. The relationship between Michelle and her mother (and her father) was tempestuous. The book goes forward and backwards in time. A good part of the books talks about food. Food was the primary way her mother showed her love. And, after her mother died, becoming good at preparing some of the dishes her mother made was a primary way Michelle tried to keep the memory of her mother alive and pay tribute to her. As my food tastes are not very adventurous, and I am not a good cook, I sometimes struggled getting through the lengthy descriptions of meals and food preparation. The passages made perfect sense in the context of the book. The end of the book talked about the initial success of Michelle's band Japanese Breakfast. I recommend the book to anyone who wants to read a memoir about grief and the way one person attempted to handle the loss. Just be aware that there is a lot of detailed discussion about food.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse