My first word was Korean: Umma. Even as an infant, I felt the importance of my mother. She was the one I saw most, and on the dark edge of emerging conscoiusness I could already tell that she was mine. In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner

Food is life, food is love and food is belonging. With that leitmotif we are guided through this wonderful, yet heartbraking memoir by Michelle Zauner. Michelle Zauner is an american singer of the band „Japanese Breakfast“ and is telling her life story of her life with her Korean mother and the death of her of cancer.

Zauner does a beuatiful job at describing the great love her mother had for her as well as the difficult parts of their shared relationship. She doesn’t shy away from heavy topics like emotional or physical abuse and at the same time wonderfully portrays the dichotomy between the hardships in her relationship to her mother (and her father) but also the emotional bond that doesn’t cease to last.

Her mothers ilness and cancer of death is in the center of the story. Here as well Zauner does a very good job at describing the helplessness and grief that comes with being the daughter of a person at the end of their life. The questions one has to face while experiencing that (belonging, heritage, self identity, yet also coming to terms with a parent being a whole being of their own) carry the story through to their end. The topics are quite heavy and so I really took my time while reading this book to be able to process it fully. I also needed some time to write this review as I really wanted to let all that sink in.

Another hard topic Zauner grapples with that is that of her relationship with her father. Here as well the dichotomy becomes quite clear: On the one side the justified wishes to be loved and cared for as a daughter, seen and loved. On the other side the daughter’s devaluation of the father, congruent with the over-idealisation of the mother. From a professional perspective this is a psychological construct that is not a seldom as one might think, and Zauner does a good job at portraying it in honesty.

Food is the main leitmotif in Zauners memoir. Food represents not just love, but also the heritage, hopes and dreams. By that it also symbols belonging and identity, as well as emotion and love in its purest form. For me, an avid fictional food lover, this was perfect. I heard a lot of other people though have difficulties with the many korean foods mentioned as that supposedly threw them out of the story a lot. For me, although admittedly someone who was somewhat familiar with korean food, that was not the case.

Overall this was a heavy, yet important read and I liked Zauners take on it. This one is not recommended though for people who might be triggered by difficult relationships to parents, the depiction of illness and death or overall the struggles of belonging and identity (just pointing this out here as i know of a lot of people who were quite triggered by these topics). If you are sure though that this is not something that will bother you, I would recommend this for a reading time, when you really want to delve into deep and troubling topics.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 stars

Trigger Warning: Emotional Abuse, Physical Abuse