If you like memoirs, then I think you will appreciate Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, who is a Korean American musician that performs under the name Japanese Breakfast. Crying in H Mart is about her grief over the loss of her mother and trying to keep her mother’s memory alive, and holding on to her Korean identity, by learning to cook Korean food. I found Crying in H Mart comforting to read as I still struggle with my own losses.

Zauner is honest in her portrayal of her relationship with her mother, who was stern and had high expectations for her daughter. Zauner suffered from depression as a teenager and felt that she could no longer relate to her mother, which caused somewhat of an estrangement between them. She attended college on the opposite side of the country and was living in Philadelphia trying to launch a music career when she found out her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Wanting to make amends with her mother, Zauner dropped everything and moved home to Eugene, Oregon to take care of her mother as she slowly succumbed to cancer. Zauner’s depiction of her grief after her mother’s death will make you examine your own relationship with your mother, and perhaps make you realize you should put more effort into that relationship before it is too late.

Crying in H Mart is a well written story about familial relationships and struggling with one’s own identity. It is full of delicious descriptions of Korean food as Zauner recounts her mother’s cooking, her childhood trips to visit relatives in South Korea, and her own attempts to cook Korean meals; you can almost taste the food as she describes it.