Book Review of Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner
We have seen rave reviews about the memoir Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zauner. On a recent trip to Seattle we found a copy in a local bookstore, so we scooped it up and read it in a couple of days. Here is our book review of Crying in H Mart.
This is a book review of Crying In H Mart: a Memoir by Michelle Zauner. It will provide a review of the book cover, intrusive thoughts while we read the book, a summary, our review, and books we recommend that reminded us of Crying In H Mart.
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Slowprose Review Format
Generally speaking, we don’t think of ourselves as “serious” reviewers, so our format may be a little different. Here is what to expect when you are reading on honest review from Slowprose book reviews:
- Cover Review – doing the cliche of judging a book by its cover.
- Book Blurb – we share the book jacket or Goodreads blurb about the plot.
- Intrusive Thoughts – these are the general thoughts and feelings we have about the book while reading it.
- Book review – our overall review and star ranking of the book
- Book aesthetics – this is how gorgeous we thought the pages of the book were, or how easy/hard it was to read, or how good the narrator was if it is an audio book.
- Book recommendations – we talk about the author’s other books or if this is their first book, other books that remind us of this book in some form or fashion. Basically, this is our catch-all to talk about anything else that we want to.
To see our full review system, including our method of assigning and weighting stars, go here.
COVER REVIEW – CRYING IN H MART
Crying In H Mart gets 4 Stars for this cover.
Zauner’s book cover does a good job in being unique but not weird or off putting, as well as being both eye catching and immediately recognizable.
The red color is always going to be one your eye is drawn to, and the cartoonish type drawing on the cover piques our interest to see what the book is about. Obviously, it is a memoir since it states it on the cover, but in terms of what the memoir is going to be about, we truly didn’t know until we started reading the book.
The title could refer to so many things – it could be tongue in cheek, capturing one moment of a funny story, or it could be about sadness & grief – which is what this book actually is about.
After reading the book, our rating didn’t change, and we still really like this cover.
BOOK BLURB – Crying In H Mart by Michelle Zaunder
Given our extreme irrational fear of ever being a spoiler of an epic plot twist, we will just share the book insert or book blurb found on Goodreads to provide the information in terms of the plot:
Crying in H Mart
A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.
Michelle Zauner 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 and this complicated relationship making for a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother and other family members would bond, late at night, over Korean heritage and heaping plates of food.
As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, writing a New Yorker essay, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Korean identity & the Korean culture 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 own mother had given her.
INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS – Crying In H Mart
Easy to get into this book, right from the first chapter.
Lots of food talk. Not necessarily appealing, though?
Food poisoning is expected?????
Not painting the mom in a great light.
Cancer is evil.
Very stark imagery of death and dying. Quite shocking, honestly.
Strange to gloss over some things. Significant life events. But maybe that was the point? Everything was a blur?
*Looking up album cover to see Zauner’s mother*
*Found japanese breakfast band on spotify to listen to Zauner’s voice*
*Looked up Korean cooking show on Youtube*
End sort of fizzled. It really felt like the end of a diary rather than a book.
Still disturbed over the food poisoning thing. Which is not at all the point of the book, but UGH.
CRYING IN H MART – BOOK REVIEW
Slowprose Star Rating – 4.0 Stars
We absolutely love a good memoir. The chance to get a glimpse into other people’s lives, how they live, or experiences they have had. Zauner’s memoir, Crying In H Mart let us do this in a few different ways.
This book was a glimpse into Korean life. More specifically, a glimpse at it from a child who was born to a Korean mother and American Father. Not just the Korean food, which was a heavy focus (a little too heavy, honestly) but also the Korean family, traditions and lifestyles. Customs and daily activities. We loved that aspect of it and find it so interesting, coming from a reader that hasn’t had much experience or exposure to it.
When we say it was a little too heavy on the food aspect, several times the author got very detailed about the specific Korean dishes they ate and it was more information on that issue than we needed, as a reader. It kind of felt like filler. We understood the connection she was making about the food to her family, her heritage and her heart, but she got there without having to keep doubling down on it.
The other focus was on the authors own grief of losing her late mother. Her grief for the loss of her mother began when her mother was still alive but declining. Like most, Zauner’s experience with grief in some ways began when her mother shared her colon cancer diagnosis. It was intertwined in all the remaining time they had together.
These raw parts of the book were the strongest, making the reader feel the anguish and hopelessness that a family member feels when an important person in their life is dying. Having experienced significant and life altering grief like a lot of readers, these were passages of the book that resonated deeply with us. Zauner’s prose did a good job articulating an emotion that often times is hard to capture.
The other parts of her life that were moving forward at the same time were sort of peripherally mentioned, almost off hand comments about seeing a guy and then marrying him. Other than in the context of the significance of the wedding to her mother, these didn’t really add much to the overall story other than kind of giving context cues, in a way.
The story is strongest up and until her mother’s death. After that the story kind of flails, but maybe that was the point. After significant loss, that is what life feels like.
Overall this was a decent memoir. We vacillated between a 3.5 and 4 star but ended up with a 4 star because parts of the story do stay with us. In a way, this memoir almost felt like the authors own personal diary, talking to herself about things rather than storytelling to an audience.
But overall, a decent book. Very quick and easy read in terms of flow, not necessarily in terms of content. It was a great book to take with me on a recent trip.
Slowprose Star Rating – 4.0 Stars
BOOK AESTHETICS – CRYING IN H MART
It is next to impossible for us not to go into a bookstore if we see one. Our recent trip to Seattle was no exception. We were so happy to see a lot of bookstores as we were out and about exploring the city. Lamplight Books is a shop right in the most touristy section of Seattle, right by the fish market and the first Starbucks. Definitely check it out if you are in the area!
We weren’t looking for Crying In H Mart specifically, but decided to buy it when we saw it as we were browsing the stacks. The paperback is a perfect size to take on a trip, or would be a great beach read (although the grief part may not be considered ‘beach read’). It was the perfect size to fit in my purse and was great to read on the plane ride home!
It wasn’t until after we read Crying In H Mart did we realize how apropos it was that we bought this book while visiting a harbor city. There is so much discussion about a local H mart, or Korean grocery store, along with korean cuisine and descriptions of food (even things like a brand of seaweed) in the book, and we saw so many of these similar things while we were wandering around the food market. There are no coincidences, as the saying goes.
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
We have two types of book recommendations based on Crying in H Mart.
If you liked the memoir aspect of it, we recommend any of these three books – Educated, The Sound of Gravel, & The Glass Castle. All three are similar in their stories, all three are super quick and engaging reads (although the stories can be difficult to read) and all three are books that I still think of to this day.
The stories were absolutely fascinating and well told, and may give you a good cry. They have been around a while, Educated being the most recently released, and all would be arguably considered some of the greatest works of creative nonfiction.
If you are looking for another story that focuses on Korean people or Korean families, we recommend the excellent, epic story told in Pachinko.
You can find all these and more in our storefront, Slowestuff Books From The Blog storefront.
We hope you enjoyed this Crying In H Mart book review! If you have any memoirs you have read and loved, please let us know what they are. We really strive to read at least a few great memoirs every year.
If you want more book posts, check out the Slowprose section of the blog where we have more book reviews, book lists, favorite authors and more. Sign up for our emails and you will get a monthly update of the books we are reading, and a quarterly “best of” wrap up!
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Happy reading!
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[…] Crying in H Mart was a book that we had heard a lot of hype about and picked up while on a quick trip. It is a super fast read and was engaging enough to earn a spot here. Not sure if it is one of our favorite of all time memoirs, but it is one we liked well enough to recommend. This is a grief centered book with some stark visuals of cancer, death & dying, so just prepare yourself for that if you are interested in picking this one up. Our full review can be found here. […]