From the Bookshelf of resh’s reading prodigies…

Crying in H Mart

Michelle Zauner

Start date: August 15, 2023

Finish date: September 1, 2023

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Aug 24, 2023 Salena Kha rated it it was amazing

"The memories I stored I could not let festered. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes and I had to seize it foster it so it did not die in me… The proof of her life lived on in me.”

** semi-spoilers i think **

this memoir is incredible. so many of the experiences she expresses with her Korean immigrant mother were immediately relatable even though we don’ "The memories I stored I could not let festered. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes and I had to seize it foster it so it did not die in me… The proof of her life lived on in me.”

** semi-spoilers i think **

this memoir is incredible. so many of the experiences she expresses with her Korean immigrant mother were immediately relatable even though we don’t share the same culture. the way she shares memories of her childhood perception of her mother and development with her culture through family and food is so beautiful to me.

her mother’s illness forced michelle to obtain her own identity along with the culture and history that her mother had given to her. just as she came out of college after her rebellious teenage years and painfully described childhood, she almost lost touch with her culture until the illness. the way i know i would do the same if i experienced it— i would try to hold on to anything that came from her. i would feel all the emotions she did when her mother was sick and she was taking care of her. i would keep hope in notebook scribbled statistics of her health. i would fight to take care of her just as she did for me. food is how she expresses her love. i would switch roles to cook her a meal in searching for common ground. i would hold on to what she represents in me.

“How cyclical and bittersweet for a child to retrace the image of their mother. For a subject to turn back to document their archivist.”

finding her identity is essential to her maturity. the realization of how her painfully overbearing yet loving mother was right all along was so significant. her journey in connecting with her culture and family in addition to chasing her dreams. every memory in her home she reminisces is kept within her identity. how she wishes her mother could see her and the successful career she built. everything was so emotional and felt so real to me.

her language is so beautiful. i teared up at her saddest and laughed at her happiest. this is one of the best representations for daughters of immigrant parents i've ever seen as well. i love everything about this memoir, and i think it will be my favorite for a while!! ...more

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Jul 23, 2023 Resh rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite, i-have-a-copy, i-love-pain

I HAVE THIS BOOK DID YOU KNOW

hi guys. i just finished the book. and im stunned. Michelle Zauner is quite multitalented. from being a musical icon to being on Obama's favorite reads for 2021. the way this memoir was written was so painful. michelle's relationship with her mother, and the idea of slowly watching a loved one die is something i can relate to. when she heard that her mother had cancer, i felt like throwing up. or close to tears. the mother daughter relationship is one of the most com I HAVE THIS BOOK DID YOU KNOW

hi guys. i just finished the book. and im stunned. Michelle Zauner is quite multitalented. from being a musical icon to being on Obama's favorite reads for 2021. the way this memoir was written was so painful. michelle's relationship with her mother, and the idea of slowly watching a loved one die is something i can relate to. when she heard that her mother had cancer, i felt like throwing up. or close to tears. the mother daughter relationship is one of the most complex relationships in humankind, and nothing can ever compare to it. how do you live without your mother, especially as the daughter of an immigrant parent, when your mother is there for every step of your life? when she said her mother's love language was food, i remembered the times my mother made my favorite daal when i was having a bad day. when she mentioned how her mother broke in her boots for her to spare her the discomfort, i came to a realization. our mothers will care for us more than anyone else, going as far to spare us the smallest of discomforts. sometimes they impart knowledge that they believe to be true in harmful ways, but as Michelle Zauner says, it's so we won't regret the same things they did. michelle's struggle after she loses her mother is so relatable, because I would feel the same way as she did. if i walked into an indian grocery store, i would not be able to hold back tears. crying in hmart is so profoundly impactful, and i think this is my all time favorite memoir. despite not being the same flavor of asian Michelle is, or even experiencing a life similar to hers, i found that i was full of so many thoughts and emotions while reading this. she wrote this book in a way that showed that to her, everyone paled in comparison to her mother. as she said her mother is the other half of her, and the appreciation i have for my mother grew with the words of someone who lost her other half.
"My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her. Thrown as we were on opposite sides of a fault line - generational, cultural, linguistic - we wandered lost without a reference point, each of us intelligible to the other's expectations until these past few years when we had just begun to unlock the mystery, carve the psychic space to accommodate each other, appreciate the differences between us, linger in our refracted commonalities. Then, what would. have been the most fruitful years of understanding were cut violently short, and I was left alone to decipher the secrets of inheritance without its key." ...more

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