A review by christygoldsmith
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

3.0

In contrast to the other memoir I read recently (Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang), this story is told by a grieving adult who has lived a life within a challenging mother-daughter dynamic. Again, one of my favorite aspects of this story was the central place of food within the tale. I did struggle sometimes, though, because the audience for this piece wasn't terribly clear to me, nor was the central focus of it. I think memoirs work best when they are narrow, targeted explorations of one aspect of a person's experience. Without that sort of centering, they feel a bit like bed-to-bed tales of someone's life. That's the challenge I had with this memoir--at times it seemed like an exploration of her identity, at times it was focused on her relationship with her mom, and at times she was grappling with elements of culture (of all of the cultures to which she belongs). I think those themes can dovetail, but they didn't quite make it here which made it less of a tour de force for me. 3.5 stars but worth reading for the vignettes within that REALLY work (perhaps this would've been a more powerful collection of essays than one memoir?). I did cry at the end, though, so maybe it worked?