Dear Lit Loves,
I took a break from my book club assigned reading this month because I had already read the book selection. If that leads me anywhere it will usually be to selecting a book from the memoir genre. Sure enough, I found Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and decided to take a chance on it. I did not know anything about the author except that I think her memoir won the GoodReads Choice Award for best memoir of 2021. I later learned the author is in a band and has written for several major media publications.
This memoir is written from the standpoint of a young girl growing up in Eugene, Oregon having a Korean mother and an American father. Her mother was quite strict with her while she was growing up and her father worked as a used car salesman. Her mother embraces her Korean heritage through food and lots of it. That is how she expresses her love for Michelle is through making authentic Korean dishes for her and also, the family goes biannually to visit her mother's family in Seoul.
When Ms. Zauner's mother is diagnosed with cancer, she learns from her father that her mom will begin undergoing treatment in an attempt to slow the cancer. Her mom has made it clear that after watching her sister die of cancer, she will only give cancer treatment about two rounds and if it has not proven successful in shrinking her cancerous tumors, she wants no further treatment. When Ms. Zauner is called home by her father who tells her he needs help caring for her mother, we see the visceral shock a daughter experiences upon witnessing a parent in rapidly declining health. While Ms. Zauner's dad retreats into his own world during this time period, it is Michelle who realizes her mother is becoming sluggish, dehydrated, and emaciated from lack of calorie intake. Following a local hospitalization, Ms. Zauner's mother is able to come home for a brief time as other female friends arrive to stay with Michelle and her dad to help care for her mother.
It was heart-breaking at times to read about the final days and moments Michelle shared with her mother as she realizes her mother is quickly nearing the end of her life. Michelle moves heaven and earth to make her mother happy prior to her passing. Her mother dies at home in her own surroundings. The reader then watches as Ms. Zauner stays with her father and tries to clean out her mother's belongings from her childhood home. And ten months later, Michelle tries to move forward with her life by following her artistic aspirations and continuing to try and embrace the Korean heritage she inherited from her mom.
It's always interesting to witness what we inherit from our parents and how each influenced our lives from what they said or did to their own interests and our later insights into how they raised us as individuals. A good portion of the book is about the author forging her own identity, but it is also about coming to appreciate a parent's way of displaying love and how he/she has shaped our lives and identity. The book is also a bird's eye look into what is often the excruciating experience of an adult child losing a parent to an aggressive cancer. Did we say what we wanted them to know before they left us? What memories of them shine most brilliantly in our recollections of them? And this book is also about carrying on the best parts of our parents in ourselves as we try to move on with our lives following their deaths. How will our parents live on through us as we try and find our way forward in life without them?
This is a moving book. Having lost a father to a rare cancer, I had to put the book down at times as I remembered my own experiences with my dad in his final days and asked myself what characteristics of his live on through me? What a moving tribute to her mom this book is. What a powerful and insightful read. I highly recommend this book.
Till my next review,
Grace (Amy)
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