#1 NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese
Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love,
and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking
to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR)
In
this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle
Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter,
and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of
the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of
struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her;
of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her
grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother
would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As
she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in
the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling
band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her
Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the
life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal
cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with
her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language,
and history her mother had given her.
Vivacious
and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly
alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that
will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H
Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.