A review by ciarazard
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

emotional medium-paced

3.25

Trigger warning: grief, losing a parent to cancer

As someone who has watched a parent battle cancer, I found the chapters where Michelle Zauner talks about her mother's illness relatable. They mirrored my own experiences and emotions so closely: anger, guilt, and the desperate need to hold on to memories. 

 “I envied and feared my mother’s ability to keep matters private, as every secret I tried to hold close ate away at me. She possessed a rare talent for keeping secrets, even from us. She did not need anyone. She could surprise you with how little she needed you. All those years she instructed me to save 10 percent of myself like she did, I never knew it meant she had also been keeping a part of herself from me too.” 

In one of my annotations, I wrote: 

"She [my mother] always keeps us at arm's length, afraid to get close, afraid to let anyone else in. And just as you start to feel comfortable with her - she does what she does best. She knows when and how to remind you of your place."  

Even though the writing itself was decent, I just found it harder to stay engaged after the chapter where her mother passed.  Everything else that happened felt skippable. I couldn't really care about her music career and her rise to fame as Japanese Breakfast; I feel like that should've been in another music-related memoir. 

I wanted to read more about raw, honest grief and the ugly parts to it  — and yes, perhaps I was projecting, perhaps I wanted to find comfort as someone who lost a parent to cancer, too — but I was misled by the title and the summary. While the cooking parts were entertaining at first, they got pretty boring and repetitive and, at times, unnecessary fluff.