Mother Daughter Connections in Crying at H Mart

Crying in H Mart: Zauner’s Connection to Her Mother’s Cooking to Process Grief

In Crying in H Mart, Zauner describes her mother Chongmi as loving but strict. She also states that “I relied on my mom for access to our Korean heritage” (4). This is an important point that Zauner uses to frame her story: her connection to her mom is not just about mother-daughter, it is about past-present. To maintain that connection, she sees food as the entry-point. Chongmi was always good to her daughter and even gave her permission to sleep at a friend’s house once a week while the adolescent Michelle processed grief over her grandmother’s death. However, Chongmi was also human and became somewhat jealous over the fact that her daughter began to bond with another mother—her friend’s mother. Still Chongmi permitted her daughter to attend a liberal arts college, even though it disappointed her. She did not ask for much, but she also could not conceal her own pain and hurt. Yet, despite her reticence to show affection, Zauner’s mother was devoted to her daughter.

Zauner writes of her mother that “she was my champion...my archive. She had taken care to preserve my existence and growth” (222). This shows one of the ways in which the mother acted as a champion of Zauner’s accomplishments, small and large. Chongmi believed in her daughter and wanted her to succeed, because her daughter represented herself, her people, her past, and her present. Even with death approaching, Chongmi understood implicitly that through her daughter life would continue on. Zauner seems to have understood this implicitly as well for at the end of memoir she is about to sing karaoke and she hopes that her heritage will help her to find the words. It is because of her mother’s devotion that Zauner can have this kind of connection to her own past and maintain it through her present. This sense of connection is really there from the beginning of the memoir.

For instance, early on Zauner writes, “I remember the snacks Mom told me she ate when she was a kid and how I tried to imagine her at my age. I wanted to like all the things she did, to embody her completely” (5). This is a common feeling among children who venerate their parents. It was natural for Zauner to have these feelings for her mother, and because her mother reciprocated love that Zauner felt, there was devotion that flowed in both ways: Chongmi raised Zauner, took care of her as a child and gave her access to their Korean past; Zauner helped to care for Chongmi in the mother’s old age, as she was ailing, even speeding up a path to marriage that the mother might witness her daughter become a wife. The devotion between mother and daughter was real and was based in their connection of a past that was larger than either of them and that would, if maintained in the present, carry them both into the future.

Yet Zauner was not always happy about this devotion, for at the same time, being part American she wanted independence and autonomy—room to be her own self. That is why she writes, “Left with her in the woods, I was overwhelmed by her time and attention, a devotion that I learned could be both an auspicious privilege and have smothering consequences” (16). One on one, Zauner could not quite process all that devotion demanded of her. That is why she wanted to break free to some extent and explore life on her own at the liberal arts college, or at her friend’s house when she was younger. All the same, her connection to her mother never died—and when Chongmi died, Zauner turned to food to help revitalize that connection—for it was food that always was the link between them that never pulled too tightly or felt too burdensome. Food was a joy, a place of happiness—and it was this feeling that sometimes overwhelmed her in the H Mart, where she went to obtain the Korean ingredients to make the food that would help her process her grief at her mother’s death.

One reason for Zauner’s willingness to use food to help her process is, as she notes, that “in marked contrast to the other domains of parental authority, my mother was loose when it came to the rules regarding food. If I didn’t like something, she never forced me to eat it, and if I ate only half my portion, she never made me finish my plate” (22). Because her mother was kind and generous when it came to eating, it is through food that Zauner knows best how to process the complicated feelings she has for her mother. It is not through hiking—because that would dredge up memories that were not so pleasant. It was not through some other activity either—but it was through food, and through cooking, that the best memories Zauner has of her mother come to the surface and allow her to feel in a positive way.