Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

We sit here in silence, eating our lunch. But I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves. We look for a taste of it in the food we order and the ingredients we buy.

I came to realize that while I struggled to be good, I could excel at being courageous.

feeling like my belonging was something to prove. Something that was always in the hands of other people to be given and never my own to take, to decide which side I was on, whom I was allowed to align with. I could never be of both worlds, only half in and half out, waiting to be ejected at will by someone with greater claim than me. Someone full. Someone whole.

“I know you wish it was me. I wish it was me too.” I put my hand on his back. “No,” I said softly, though in my ugliest heart I did. It was supposed to be him. We had never planned for this circumstance, where she died before he did.

I’ve just never met someone like you, as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party. It was a strange thought to hear from the mouth of the woman who had birthed and raised me, with whom I shared a home for eighteen years, someone who was half me. My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her.

There are few things I detest more in this world than an adult man proclaiming himself to be a foodie,