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A review by yunzin
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
4.0
Crying in H Mart is such a wonderful book and its taught me a lot of things I didn’t realize. I love the writing style so much—the explanations of the cultural things, the foods (this make me hungrier more than ever), and I sobbed to the fact that she’s watched her mother become weaker day by day and experienced the loss of her mother.
Here’s some of my favorite quotes from Crying in H Mart:
[ Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it. Sometimes my grief feels as though I've been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I'm colliding with a wall that won't give. There's no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramining into over and over, at reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again. ]
[ Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them. I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to embody her completely. ] <3
[ The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her. ]
Here’s some of my favorite quotes from Crying in H Mart:
[ Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it. Sometimes my grief feels as though I've been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I'm colliding with a wall that won't give. There's no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramining into over and over, at reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again. ]
[ Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem—constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them. I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to embody her completely. ] <3
[ The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her. ]