Michelle is in the band Japanese Breakfast & her book is as beautiful as the music she gifts to this world. It’s about many things — grief, growing into yourself, food as a love language, but ultimately all these things are lessons learnt while caring for her mum who had cancer and then losing her. A forewarning that this book made me cry multiple times, but i was truly so in awe of how thoughtfully honest Michelle was
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My flatmate lent me this beautiful, moving memoir by Michelle Zauner (the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast), which is all about her losing her mum to cancer in her 20s. Her prose is gentle, precise and insightful, as she tries to make sense of her mum, and her half-Korean identity now that her link to it has left this world, through their shared relationship with, and love of, Korean food. Highly recommend - I don't even listen to Japanese Breakfast; she's just a brilliant, soulful writer in her own right 🍳
Feb 9, 2024
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A memoir documenting the grief the author faces coping with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and death. A beautiful and heartfelt story about family and identity as Zauner places her complex relationship with her mother under a microscope. They find understanding and comfort in food and through the author trying to connect with her Korean heritage more.
Another name you might recognize more than Michelle Zauner is Japanese Breakfast. If you have ever listened to this band and thought highly of the lyricism, just know Zauner breathes all the same artistic talent and thought into her novel.
I can’t recommend Crying in H Mart enough, it is truly an amazing memoir.
Feb 6, 2025
i love a good music memoir and japanese breakfast is one of my favorite bands out there right now. this book was an amazing read, zauner has a really great voice to her writing and is an amazing storyteller. i thought this book was extremely moving and a unique way to tell her story. and it’s also fun to know the backstories of my favorite songs as well. highly recommend if you like memoirs, music and to cry a little bit when you read.
Jan 14, 2025
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i know it sounds so cliché but i work for a climate organisation & i just came home from a work event so i’m feeling very inspired/energised/refreshed…please find your community because it is tiring, draining, & almost impossible to drive social change alone. you don’t have to do it alone.
A community helps your cause. We protest, meet, rally, & cry in numbers for this reason. 💜
Jun 29, 2024
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i really also think about how much boys are taught ways to perform masculinity & how it is legitimised through tangible things like building a career etc but with women i find that from a young age our identity, behaviours, & thoughts are always spoken about in relation to other people/things — gender roles within the family, how we’re perceived by men, our friendships with other women, our relationships with material things etc etc — and this shows up in the labels that women are often given too! so and so is someone’s daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother etc etc. i envy the freedom of boyhood so much, the freedom to just be (this is not to discount the toxicity of traditional masculinity, i just think that boys are still afforded more “play” and therefore have more opportunities to develop their sense of self).
maybe i am also biased because of how i’ve grown up & whatnot but i never really understood what it meant to quote unquote be a woman or perform femininity. i only saw this modelled within my nurturing friendships with women as i’ve gotten older but when i was younger, in church it was always “ok well don’t do this or that because x y z will happen to men if you do” or within my extended family it was often “are you seeing anyone? when are you having kids”. damn what happened to asking about how i’m doing or what my dreams are!!!
long rant sorry !! but that’s my long winded way of saying “i feel you” haha
Jun 28, 2024
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i am starting to realise how detrimental & unfair it is to not only myself but also the people around me because i then hold them to unreachable standards.
we are learning!! not there yet but slowly and surely
Jul 2, 2024