A BOOK ON FOOD AS MEMORY AND COPING MECHANISM - CRYING IN H MART BY MICHELLE ZAUNER

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BOOK NAME: CRYING IN H MART

AUTHOR NAME: MICHELLE ZAUNER

GENRE: MEMOIR

PUBLISHER: PANMACMILLAN

BOOK BUY LINK: https://amzn.in/d/5sDEb6N

BOOK RATING: 3.5/5

 


BOOK COVER IMAGE




BOOK REVIEW

Crying in H Mart is a memoir written poignantly like fiction where the author speaks about her lost Korean identity that she tries desperately to revive after her mother’s passing. She is initially overcome by the grief of her mother’s cancer diagnosis and then by her loss. All the while she tries to survive with food as a coping mechanism which she feels keeps her mother and her identity alive.

 

The best part of the book is how the author tries to string together tales of food with her mother’s memories—the late-night meals they used to have, the one food that she loved, the food that she had on her death bed—with her Korean-American identity and later used it as a coping mechanism and to reconnect with her past. 

 

I chose this book after having it on my TBR for ages. I was longing for a book with grief, loss, trauma, and identity as the main plot with an Asian voice and this memoir checked all the boxes aptly. I was so drowned in the book in the initial chapters and all the characters and their behaviours felt very relevant to me. Being an Asian myself, I could see the similarities in the family dynamics and interpersonal relationships with most Indian households. 

 

I was so glad someone chose to highlight the struggles of being an overachieving child whose parents only use them as a trophy child to be proud of. The intricacies of bad parenting were written so well, and I was almost this close to calling it the book of the year. But I lost it when she started glorifying her abusive parents’ behaviour and justifying why they had to be so. Why would someone who lost their entire childhood because one of their parents was never present because of his extramarital affair and the other parent was never emotionally available feel the need to justify their behaviour? 

 

The relationship between food and her identity and grief was also slightly repetitive. It felt like whenever she did not know what to write, the author decided to fill it up with food connection stories, which was great but obvious. I could really see through her trauma and suffering, but I felt she wasn't helping herself as she should have. 

 



This is a part of the #BlogchatterFoodFest

#penbooksandscalpel


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