Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Zauner is unsparing in her description of their relationship prior to the diagnosis. But even at their worst, the mother-daughter pair used food as a common language. Sharing beloved foods was their expression of connection and love, and cooking was how her mother demonstrated her care.

Her mother’s condition worsened instead of improved. Zauner’s frustration with her inability to alleviate her mother’s symptoms or to provide better comfort food than her mother’s friend, as well as her anger at that pushy friend, the ineffective doctors, and the world at large for robbing her of the years when she and her mother would have, should have, come together to make up for their years of struggle are specific to Zauner’s relationship - but immediately recognizable to those who’ve witnessed the slow loss of a loved one.

Alongside losing her mother, Zauner lost her closest connection to the Korean half of her heritage. The frustration at not being able to cook Korean comfort foods for her mother during her illness bled into feelings of loss around that part of her identity – she can’t cook her mother’s foods or speak her mother’s language, and her mother will never be the one to teach her. But she could learn how to recreate the tastes of home from Maangchi’s cooking videos, and she would stay connected to her extended family even with the linguistic barriers. Ultimately, Zauner’s story isn’t a simplified story about somehow rising above grief; it’s more one of looking grief straight-on and seizing happiness where one can. And still having days of sorrow and anger, and crying while walking through the grocery store.