“My April Monthly Read is the extraordinary Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Some of you may already know Michelle as the uber-cool singer and guitarist of the American cult indie band Japanese Breakfast. With this book, she also proves herself to be a first-class memoirist, writing with raw honesty about her difficult teenage relationship with her mother and the grief that follows her mother’s death from cancer.
“Michelle’s mother Chongmi was Korean, and much of this story centres around the cultural and identity issues Michelle grappled with growing up in the US with a feckless American father and a tough Korean mother. Somehow food, and specifically the intricate traditional Korean dishes her mother prepared with such love and skill, becomes the theme which keeps mother and daughter together, and unites Michelle with the Korean half of her identity even after her mother has passed away. Everyone with an immigrant background will find relatability searching in a specialist food shop for food that reminds you of home, and for Michelle food is the connective tissue of a relationship between mother and daughter that even cancer cannot break. The love and aroma from the dishes practically rises from the page.
“This is a book about loss that is also about love; it’s a book about South Korea that is also about West Coast small town America; it’s a story that is both beautiful and heartbreaking; it is as raw as it is precious. I bawled my eyes out, but I also loved it and I hope you do too” – Dua Lipa
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