Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Michelle Zauner’s mother was her one living route into being Korean. Her father is a white American; she was born in Seoul but raised in Eugene, Oregon from infancy, and she can barely speak the language. So when her mother, Chongmi, died of cancer in 2014, her twenty-five-year-old daughter lost more than a parent — she lost the person who held the keys to half of who she was. Crying in H Mart, which grew out of Zauner’s 2018 New Yorker essay of the same name, is about what you do with an inheritance no one is left to hand you. Her answer: you go and take it yourself, aisle by aisle, dish by dish.

Michelle Zauner on SummaryShelf

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir