Michelle Zauner is the lead vocalist of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast, she was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world. She wrote Japanese Breakfast's first album, Psychopomp, after the death of her mother and it focuses heavily on her grief. She wrote her memoir, Crying in H Mart, in 2021. It spent 60 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list for non fiction. The book expands on a novel she wrote in 2018 for The New Yorker. It was chosen as the Goodreads Choice Award for memoirs and autobiographies in 2021, as well as book of the year by several different publications. It was later announced that Crying in H Mart will be made into a movie by Orion Pictures and Michelle Zauner is helping to write the screenplay. In the book, she talks about cancer and terminal illness, alcoholism, medical content, a car accident, abortion, death of a parent, and grief.
In Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner speaks about her relationship with her parents, focusing on her relationship with her mother, which was not always easy. In what I thought was a very honest depiction, she describes how she moved away from her parents after graduating high school, needing space to carve out her own identity, and the panic that she felt when she found out about her mother's cancer diagnosis. She speaks about how her family bonded over different foods, how her mother used food as a symbol of love, and how, after her mother's diagnosis, she started to learn how to cook more Korean food as a way of caring for her mother and reconnecting with her Korean heritage. Michelle Zauner does a wonderful job of laying out the story, this memoir is not difficult to get through. It's a beautiful and raw depiction of the different relationships we can have with those that we love and how each of us deal with grief. I have heard that some readers were disappointed that she doesn't spend more time on the creation and success of her band, Japanese Breakfast, but I disagree. This is not a book about her rise to fame, and while she does touch on their success and how much of it was due to her channeling her grief into the creation of their album, Psychopomp, she does not focus on it which I appreciated. The book is beautifully written, well laid out, and sad at times (I cried quite a bit at the halfway point) but not overly morose and leaving you with a hopeful feeling.
I'm giving Crying in H Mart 5 stars! A moving portrayal of love and loss, I have no notes. I would like to mention that I had never heard of Japanese Breakfast before reading this book, so you do not need to be a fan of her music or know anything about the author before reading.
For more from Michelle Zauner, check out her band's instagram page @Jbrekkie
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