CryinginH-Mart:AnOdeto CulturalIdentityandFood

By Kelly Deng

H-Mart has forever served as the quintessential haven amongst Asian Americans within Westchester County—if not across the entire North American continent. Despite the physical distance of over seven thousand miles separating New York from Asia, H-Mart fosters a connection to the “homeland” in the comfort of an Asian American’s “new” homeland.

Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H-Mart beautifully encapsulates the complexities that accompany the Asian American experience. Zauner was born in Seoul, the daughter of native-Korean Chongmi and Joel, a white American. The memoir will feel familiar to children of immigrants, whose complicated relationships with family are often paralleled by equally strenuous relationships with their food. As much as it is

A wave in Asian American food memoirs in recent years has shed light upon a transformational uptick in Asian American cultural representation in literature. Asian American writing has often been confined to the limitations of cookbooks meaning racial identity was merely reduced to matters of food. However, Zauner transcends beyond this “fourth wall” and carves out a political space to write about cultural food in a way that does not cater to a white audience. Her writing is not plagued by asides to explain what ppeongtwigi or tteokbokki is she writes about personal attachments to childhood foods with pure sincerity. a linear narrative, this memoir serves as an assemblage of juxtapositions and anecdotes tying the loss of her mother to the “death” of her Korean heritage. Losing a parent is one thing, but to also lose a bond to one’s culture in the process is its own tragedy.