this is how many times I cried reading michelle zauner’s crying in h mart: a book review BY TASIA MATTHEWS @kanitahlah Tasia currently works in international security and peacebuilding, with a focus on Middle East, North Africa region. She plans to return to school for a Master's in global security and governance. She likes reading, playing tennis, and generally being outside.
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Back in 2018, while doing something but not something important enough for me to remember, I found myself reading a free article on The New York Times. This article, a <5 minute read that left me a blubbery mess by its end, was the prequel to Zauner’s 2021 memoir of the same name, Crying in H Mart. Considering how much I could relate to the NYT piece – I’m sure I’m not alone in admitting that I am deathly afraid of losing my mom, my best friend and also the physical embodiment of my connection to Thai culture – as soon as I discovered that Zauner was expanding her piece into a whole book, I hopped onto Penguin Ran-
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dom House to place my preorder. Boy, how I have never made a more validating purchase.
timely death after a long and embittered battle with cancer. Peppered throughout the pages, detailed descriptions of her family’s collective love affair with food, which serve to help us comprehend the extent of food’s power in bringing people together in times of both great happiness and grief.
The day I received the book, I read it in one sitting, in the same chair for hours and only getting up to grab more tissues when my shirt was no longer a usable substitute. “Something that was always in Zauner’s writing flows easi- the hands of other people to be ly, indicative of her lifelong given and never my own to take, career as a musician. Despite to decide which side I was on, taking liberal jumps back and whom I was allowed to align with. forth in her history, the read- I could never be of both worlds, er stays enraptured enough only half in and half out, waiting to never become lost, and the to be ejected at will by someone jumping helps to prepare us with greater claim than me.” as we, together with her past self, approach the known inOne white parent, one evitable – her mother’s un- Asian. A dissonant experience
