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Crying in H Mart: Zauners Connection to Her Mothers 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 friends house once a week while the adolescent Michelle processed grief over her grandmothers death. However, Chongmi was also human and became somewhat jealous over the fact that her daughter began to bond with another motherher friends 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, Zauners 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 Zauners 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 mothers 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...…The H Mart is the doorway into the world of Korean cooking, that place where she and her mother could bond in a truly special way, with the past and present merging into a perfect synthesis of time and place and personhood. That is why Zauner writes, My childhood was rich with flavorblood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table (23). As a result of this guest of honor status, Zauner sought to return to those happy days of her childhood through foodstarting at the H Mart and continuing into her own kitchen.
In conclusion, Chongmi was a strict but loving motherand the love that Zauner always appreciated most came from their time spent at the dinner table, over food, when the real richness of their Korean heritage could be sampled and tasted and experienced. That connection with the past through food was important to Zauners healing. She pursued it in her grieving process beginning at the H…
Works Cited
Zauner, Michelle. Crying at H Mart. Knopf, 2021.
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