This essay examines Michelle Zauner's memoir Crying in H Mart through the lens of food as a mechanism for processing grief and preserving cultural identity. The paper explores the complex mother-daughter relationship between Zauner and Chongmi, arguing that food served as the most unencumbered bond between them — one free of the tensions that accompanied other aspects of their relationship. By tracing how Zauner turns to Korean cooking and H Mart after her mother's death, the essay demonstrates that food functions not merely as comfort, but as a bridge between past and present, heritage and selfhood, devotion and independence.
In Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner describes her mother Chongmi as loving but strict. She also writes 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 mother is not just about a mother-daughter relationship — it is about past and 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 Zauner processed grief over her grandmother's death. However, Chongmi was also human and became somewhat jealous when her daughter began to bond with 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 deeply devoted to her daughter.
Zauner's memoir — part personal narrative, part literary memoir — uses food and the act of cooking as the thread connecting grief, identity, and cultural inheritance throughout her account.
Zauner writes of her mother that "she was my champion…my archive. She had taken care to preserve my existence and growth" (222). This passage reveals one of the central ways in which the mother acted as a champion of Zauner's accomplishments, both 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 as well. At the end of the memoir, she is about to sing karaoke and hopes that her heritage will help her find the words. It is because of her mother's devotion that Zauner can maintain this kind of connection to her own past. This sense of connection is present from the beginning of the memoir.
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. Because her mother reciprocated the love Zauner felt, there was devotion that flowed in both directions: Chongmi raised Zauner, cared for her as a child, and gave her access to their Korean past; Zauner helped to care for Chongmi in her final years, even accelerating her path to marriage so that her mother might witness her become a wife. The devotion between mother and daughter was genuine, rooted in a shared past larger than either of them.
Zauner was not always comfortable with this devotion. Being part American, she also wanted independence and autonomy — room to be her own person. 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 — to 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. When Chongmi died, Zauner turned to food to revitalize that connection. Food had always been the link between them that never pulled too tightly or felt too burdensome. Food was a joy, a space of happiness — and it was this feeling that sometimes overwhelmed her in H Mart, where she went to find the Korean ingredients to cook the dishes that would help her process her grief.
One reason for Zauner's willingness to use food as a means of processing grief 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.
"Food as the most joyful and uncomplicated connection"
"H Mart symbolizes childhood flavor and cultural memory"
Chongmi was a strict but loving mother — and 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, tasted, and experienced. That connection with the past through food was central to Zauner's healing. She pursued it in her grieving process beginning at H Mart.
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