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It’s been a big month for Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart (Knopf, 256 pages, $26.95). The 2021 New York Times bestselling memoir was released in paperback March 28, and it was recently announced that Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) will direct a film adaptation of the book.
Zauner, a Eugene native best known as the Japanese Breakfast singer and guitarist, penned the memoir shortly after her mother died of cancer. Detailing the experience of caring for her mother in plainspoken prose, Zauner is a storyteller of the finest caliber, bringing readers into one of the most difficult experiences of her life.
I teach a class called Fiction Technique in Memoir, where we examine memoirs that pull from literary techniques fiction writers use: story arc, memorable characters, effective dialogue, a narrator who is in some way affected by the story’s events. H Mart is a favorite memoir we look at for its ability to do all of that and more.
The first time I read H Mart, I thought of a Joan Didion quote I often share with my students: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” In other words, she writes in order to understand, and for readers to understand.
“People needed to know how sad that experience was and how hard it was for me to really know who I am after the fact,” Zauner said in an interview with Jessica Hopper at an Illinois Libraries Present event.
As the only child of a white father and Korean mother, Zauner worries in H Mart that if she loses her mother, she’ll lose her connection to her Korean identity. “Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?” she writes.
With H Mart, we read to understand the harsh realities of caregiving for a severely ill person. Zauner bears her soul, capturing what she wants (her mother’s recovery) and what she fears (her mother’s death, and whom she will become after). In doing so, Zauner prods readers to ask, how is our identity shaped? Who are we as individuals and how does our identity shift as we become isolated from certain people and parts of our lives?
“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart,” reads the opening line. There will be no suspense around this aspect of the story. We know going into the narrative that Zauner’s mother will die. What we don’t know is what that journey will look like.
After those opening lines, we’re given a literary tour of H Mart, the supermarket chain specializing in Asian food. Zauner’s connection to Korean food is important in the book. She uses food as connection and as nourishment in the fight against her mother’s cancer.
Zauner chronicles everything her mother consumes with extensive logs, detailing medication and food intake, bodily functions and bathing. During a particularly difficult day at the hospital, she writes, “There was no embarrassment left, just survival, everything action and reaction.”
For the film adaptation, Zauner said in a statement, “It was a daunting task, to find someone I could trust with the retelling of such a personal story. Someone who could honor my mother’s character and respect the darkest days of grief, and still make the coming of age of a half-Korean artsy outsider in a small Pacific Northwest hippie town seem real and cool.”
However the film turns out, H Mart is an honest look at how we connect to our families and ourselves, exploring grief and intimacy in a way that is so captivating and honest that it’s worth a second read. And it’s just the beginning: Zauner is now working on a book that chronicles her journey learning the Korean language.
GO: Michelle Zauner speaks at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 800-878-7323, powells.com. 6 pm (signing 7-9 pm) Friday, March 31. Free. If event space reaches capacity, people can still join the signing line in the Red Room.