Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.

love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.

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 consciousness 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.