Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

If I’m being honest, there’s a lot of anger. I’m angry at this old Korean woman I don’t know, that she gets to live and my mother does not, like somehow this stranger’s survival is at all related to my loss.

I wanted to embody a physical warning—that if she began to disappear, I would disappear too.

“Did you accept Jesus into your heart?” I asked. “Ya, I guess so,” she said.

If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way.