Review: 'Crying in H Mart,' by Michelle Zauner

By Michelle Zauner. (Alfred A. Knopf, 239 pages, $26.95.)

I had never heard of the rock band Japanese Breakfast, and I was not familiar with the Korean food mall called H Mart, so I could so easily have missed this terrific memoir and that would have been a huge shame.

"Crying in H Mart" is the story of Michelle Zauner's relationship with her mother, who is dying. It is beautifully told, deeply felt and never sentimentalized but laced with all the love and frustration and rebellion that an isolated, headstrong young woman feels.

Zauner is the founder and lead singer of Japanese Breakfast, and music is a minor theme in this book. Mostly, though, her book is about culture, food, identity — and mother. An only child, Zauner grew up outside of Eugene, Ore., the daughter of an American father and a Korean mother. While her father remains a minor figure in this book, her mother takes it over with her outsize personality. Obstinate, tough, a stupendous cook, a deeply unsympathetic nurse ("save your tears for when your mother dies," she says frequently, and Zauner does), a tiny figure dressed in black, with huge sunglasses ("New York style," she says), she runs the house and her daughter, until her daughter rebels.

Back and forth they go, mother and daughter, from Oregon to Korea and back again, and Zauner is a bit at sea wherever she goes, too American in Korea, too Asian in Oregon. Eventually, she flees to the East Coast — Bryn Mawr for college, and New York City for the club scene.

When her mother is diagnosed with a deadly cancer, Zauner returns home to nurse her and to tempt her with the amazing foods that she had grown up on. "Tender short rib, soused in sesame oil, sweet syrup, and soda and caramelized in the pan … banchan, hard-boiled soy-sauce eggs sliced in half, crunchy bean sprouts flavored with scallions and sesame oil, doenjang jjigae with extra broth, and chonggak kimchi, perfectly soured."

All the food in the world can't stop the inevitable, but Zauner knows, and the readers do as well, that its creation and proffering is an act of — and an acknowledgment of — love.

LAURIE HERTZEL