Michelle Zauner is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy, shoegaze-inspired indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet. Her third album, Jubilee, released in 2021. Crying in H Mart is her first book.
Extraordinary . . . This is a book about loss that is also about love; it’s a book about South Korea that is also about West Coast small town America; it’s a story that is both beautiful and heartbreaking; it is as raw as it is precious. I bawled my eyes out, but I also loved it and I hope you do too. -- Dua Lipa Incredible . . . It absolutely wrecked me . . . So, so emotional -- Natalie Portman I cried my way through all of it . . . It is so beautiful and so incredible . . . I was so moved, and I cannot hype it up enough. You guys need to read it for yourselves. -- Kaia Gerber Michelle Zauner's Crying In H Mart is as good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't. * Marie Claire * The best book I’ve read in the past year . . . frank, lyrical, humorous. -- Claudia Roden * Financial Times * The book’s descriptions of jjigae, tteokbokki, and other Korean delicacies stand out as tokens of the deep, all-encompassing love between Zauner and her mother, a love that is charted in vivid descriptions of her mother after death; in a time when people around the world are reckoning with untold loss due to COVID-19, Zauner’s frankness around death feels like an unexpected yet deeply necessary gift. * Vogue US * A beautiful, honest and stylish account of grief, food and heritage. The way Zauner writes about food and how it acts as a bridge between her and her mother, her culture, her sense of self, is brilliantly written. -- Nikesh Shukla, author of <i>Brown Baby</i> Crying in H Mart stunned me - with its truthfulness and the force of its yearning. Beautiful, intimate, powerful, it is an unforgettable portrayal of grief and the bond between mother and daughter. -- Catherine Cho, author of <i>Inferno</i> A gripping, sensuous portrait of an indelible mother-daughter bond that hits all the notes: love, friction, loyalty, grief. All mothers and daughters will recognize themselves – and each other – in these pages. -- Dani Shapiro, author of <i>Inheritance</i> Zauner brings dish after dish to life on the page in a rich broth of delectable details, cultural context and the personal history often packed into every bite. . . [Crying in H Mart] will ultimately thrill Japanese Breakfast fans and provide comfort to those in the throes of loss while brilliantly detailing the colorful panorama of Korean culture, traditions and — yes — food' * San Francisco Chronicle * Crying in H Mart is a warm and wholehearted work of literature, an honest and detailed account of grief over time, studded with moments of hope, humor, beauty, and clear-eyed observation. It is not to be missed. * Seattle Times * Crying in H Mart is palpable in its grief and its tenderness, reminding us what we all stand to lose. * Vulture * It is [Zauner's] ability to convey how her mother's simple offering of a rice snack was actually an act of the truest love that leaves the most indelible impression. * Refinery 29 * Incandescent. * Electric Lit * A book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music. [Zauner] seamlessly blends stories of food and memory, sumptuousness and grief, to weave a complex narrative of loyalty and loss. -- Rachel Syme A wonder: A beautiful, deeply moving coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, love and grief, food and identity. It blew me away, even as it broke my heart. -- Adrienne Brodeur,<i> author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me</i> When a loved one dies, we search all of our senses for signs of their presence. Zauner’s ability to let us in through taste makes her book stand out—she makes us feel like we are in her mother’s kitchen, singing her praises. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *