I picked up my copy of Crying in H Mart from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. I had heard of the book, I knew it was a best seller, and I knew the author was a musician. But I didn’t know much more than that. 

Yet I wanted to read Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner for two reasons:

1. As a reader, I believe everyone has a story worth sharing.

2. As a writer, I’m always curious to see how other writers structure their memoirs. 

Here’s what you should know about me:

I am not an adventurous eater. I have a pretty sensitive stomach so most, if not all, the food mentioned in this memoir was unfamiliar to me. 

And here’s what you should know about the book:

It’s beautiful. Quite simply it is a tender love letter from a daughter in honor of her mother. 

Here are just a few of my favorite passages:

“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.”

“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 can hardly speak Korean, but in H Mart it feels like I’m fluent.”

“I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you, not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it.”

“The cowboy boots arrived in one of these packages after my parents had vacationed in Mexico. When I slipped them on I discovered they’d already been broken in. My mother had worn them around the house for a week, smoothing the hard edges in two pairs of socks for an hour every day, molding the flat sole with the bottom of her feet, wearing in the stiffness, breaking the tough leather to spare me all discomfort.”

“I wondered if I should try to explain how important it was to me. That cooking my mother’s food had come to represent an absolute role reversal, a role I was meant to fill. That food was an unspoken language between us, that it had come to symbolize our return to each other, our bonding, our common ground.”

“I talked about how love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.”

“She was my champion, she was my archive. She had taken the utmost care to preserve the evidence of my existence and growth, capturing me in images, saving all my documents and possessions. She had all knowledge of my being memorized. The time I was born, my unborn cravings, the first book I read. The formation of every characteristic. Every ailment and little victory. She observed me with unparalleled interest, inexhaustible devotion.”

“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.”

Readers, have you read Crying in H Mart? What did you think of it?

Please note: I am including a link to buy the book that I’m highlighting this week. If you use my link, I do make a small commission on your purchase at no additional cost to you. I am working with Bookshop.org which also sends a portion of the profit to support local, independent bookstores.