Crying in H Mart

By: Michelle Zauner

Narrated by: Michelle Zauner

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Read by the author, Michelle Zauner, lead vocalist of Japanese Breakfast.

One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of the Year

Goodreads Choice Awards Winner: Memoir & Autobiography

The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.

'As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. Essential for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't' – Marie–Claire

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive in her audiobook as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

‘Wonderful... The writing about Korean food is gorgeous... but as a brilliant kimchi-related metaphor shows, Zauner’s deepest concern is the ferment, and delicacy, of complicated lives.’ - Victoria Segal, Sunday Times

©2021 Michelle Zauner (P)2021 Penguin Randomhouse LLC

Evocative and heartbreaking yet hopeful and humane

I walked and listened to this book, crying, my heart broken to pieces many times. I can relate to so many things, from identity crisis to losing my mother, then father, and me eventually. I've lived in Korea for almost two decades and I'll have to leave eventually, in a couple of years, probably. I'm still here but listening to all the Koreana listed here with surgical precision, from food, customs, superstitions, behavior... I already miss it all. Highly recommend.

A memoir of a self centered person

In this book everything revolves around the author’s relationship with her mother. Other people as if they don’t exist. There is also too much talk about Korean food.