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“Within five years, I lost both my aunt and my mother to cancer. So, when I go to H Mart, I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck; I’m searching for memories… It reminds me of who they were before, beautiful and full of life, wiggling Chang Gu honey-cracker rings on all ten of their fingers, showing me how to suck a Korean grape from its skin and spit out all the seeds” (Zauner).
Reading Crying in H Mart helped me understand for the first time that H Mart could be a place of healing. As a child, the possibilities were endless in the countless alleys full of green plum juice, the packages of coffee wafers, the xylitol gum tasting of green apple and mint at the checkout. But in every moment of dumping the shrimp crackers and onion rings into the cart, in every moment of not knowing whether to eat the Korean chicken or the black bean noodles, in every moment of arguing with my siblings over which ice cream to buy – my mom was present in all those moments. I did not realize that for some Asian Americans – their mothers and fathers long passed – these Asian grocery marts could be a place of refuge.
Michelle Zauner is the critically acclaimed Korean American vocalist and songwriter of the band Japanese Breakfast. Her three albums, Psychopomp (2016), Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017), and Jubilee (2021) demonstrate her overflowing passion for music and the guitar. She recently made a successful writing debut in Crying In H Mart and thus sparked the interest of the Asian American literary community.
In Crying in H Mart, Zauner weaves her heart wrenching story of her painful, yet beautiful relationship with her mom and the cancer her mom suffered, showing the forgiveness, the regret, and the grief that passed between them over the years. Zauner vividly remembers the fierce arguments between them as she wanted to pursue a career in music:
‘I don’t care if you don’t want to go to college. You have to go to college.’
‘You don’t know me at all,’ I said. This weird thing - is the thing that I love.’...
‘You want to be a starving musician?’ she said. ‘Then go live like one’.
Despite the biting cruelty that Zauner and her mom argue with, Zauner shows through her work the love of a mother is unconditional, that it is a love of sacrifice and forgiveness. Even through her mother’s pain, Zauner writes of the comfort she felt through her mom’s gentle words:
Gwaenchanh-a, gwaenchah-a,’ she said. It’s okay, it’s okay. Korean words are so familiar, the gentle coo I’d heard my whole life that assured me whatever ache was at hand would pass. Even as she was dying, my mother offered me solace, her instinct overwhelming any personal fear she might have felt but kept expertly hidden
Our mothers know our greatest desires and our worst fears, and yet, they hide their own. They know how to comfort us best and also how to hurt us most. Crying in H Mart expands upon how relationships between mothers and daughters are never perfect and are always broken, but how there are ways to mend ourselves, to stitch up the pieces, and to become whole again.
In this stunning memoir, Zauner teaches how food heals her, and all of us, away from our hate. She reminisces going through the colorful aisles and forgetting which seaweed paper her mother used to make seaweed broth with. She teaches that making entire containers of kimchi can become an experience of healing and a reflection of the lives our mothers have lived. Throughout the memoir, Zauner loses herself, and yet, finds herself again, through her mother’s food and love. She teaches me that there’s more to a visit to H Mart than I think, and that one day, when my parents are long gone, I will think of them there, by the exhaustive food courts and the seafood section, and remember their love for me.
Citations
Cover image: Penguin Press House
Zauner, Michelle. Crying In H Mart. Alfred A. Knopf, 2021.ibid.
(article by Olivia Kong)
Olivia Kong
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