More about: 3booksJapanese BreakfastBook review

“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart” is the stark opening line of Michelle Zauner’s debut book Crying In H Mart. These sort of blunt confessionals are the foundation of Zauner’s work - both as an author and as the lead singer of the indie-rock outfit Japanese Breakfast. On “In Heaven” - the opening number of 2016’s Psychopomp - Zauner reflects on the aftermath of her mother’s death, “Now I leave here as an empty fucking hole”. 

2021 was a year of surprise, but well-earned, runaway success for Zauner. Her third album under the Japanese Breakfast moniker elevated her to new levels of critical acclaim and earned her 2 Grammy nominations. Jubilee’s success, however, is nothing compared to that of her memoir. Released a little under 3 years after the publication of Zauner’s New Yorker essay of the same name, it received rave reviews and is currently in the process of being turned into a feature film by Orion Pictures. 57 weeks after it’s release, it sits at the #3 spot on the Hardcover Nonfiction best-sellers list. To get there, it has outlasted titles by the likes of Will Smith and Dave Grohl - despite Zauner enjoying just a fraction of those figures name recognition.

At the heart of H Mart’s enduring success is its unflinching, matter of fact honesty. It meets listeners where they are - it’s right there in the opening line and it’s evident throughout. Yet, at the same time, Zauner never tries to cushion the realities of life and death - nor does she ever attempt to whitewash her experiences as a Korean-American for a Western audience. Zauner tells of phrases told by her mother that to some would read as cold - like to never give all of yourself, but instead to “save 10 per cent, always, so there was something to fall back on”. Elsewhere, she tells of practices that to Western audiences may just seem straightforwardly bizarre - detailing, at one point, her grandmother’s practice of “Ddongchim” - which literally translates to “poop needle”. 

It’s a testament, then, to Zauner’s deeply adept writing that her mother - and wider family, at large - read as deeply sympathetic figures, whose desire to protect each other is universally relatable, even if their methods aren’t. At H Mart’s core is a deeply moving and quietly radical admission of human frailty and fault - of all the ways we hurt ourselves and those we love trying to navigate the world we find ourselves in. Children may say unthinkable things to their parents that pierce like a knife, while parents may tell their children, “I had an abortion after you because you were such a terrible child”. But, usually it’s only born out of deep love and the frustration of feeling unable to fully express it. 

As we enter the final third of Crying In H Mart, Zauner is found surveying the wreckage of grief on the eve of her mother’s funeral. “It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to”, she declares. It’s a brilliant line - one that also features in the song “Posing In Bondage”. It captures the all-consuming weight of grief; the way it becomes not just a facet of life but its defining force. Zauner is consistently terrific at capturing the ability of grief to destabilise - in both her music and literature. In H Mart, she writes of the very-particular grief of losing a parent, of no longer having “someone whole to stand beside, to make sense of me.” 

As effective as Zauner is at capturing the aftermath of her mother’s death, H Mart’s defining moments come during its heart-rending exploration of her illness. To watch a loved one suffer through terminal illness is to witness dozens of tiny deaths; the moment at which you realise that no amount of positive thinking or battling will change the inevitable, obviously, but also all the moments in which you stop recognising the person you looked up to and relied on for guidance, as their mental and physical state deteriorates.  

To watch a parent succumb to illness is to have forced upon you a terrifying role reversal, as the child undertakes the role of carer to their parent. You find yourself making the same sacrifices your parents had to make when you were a child - in Zauner’s case, putting her band on hiatus, quitting jobs and subletting her apartment. Scattered across H Mart are a number of visceral examples of this role reversal. At one point, Zauner describes how, as a child, her mother would allow her to tuck her cold feet between her thighs as her mother assured her that “she would always suffer to bring me comfort” and “that that was how you knew someone really loved you”. Zauner then contrasts this image with that of herself climbing into her mother’s hospital bed during one of the worst episodes of her cancer. In another moment, Zauner recalls using a heart-shaped, pink bucket that had once housed her bath toys, as a sick bucket for her dying mother - running back and forth between the bedroom and bathroom to empty and clean it for her bedbound mother. 

Following her mother’s death, Zauner attempts to rebuild her life and ward off the lurking hollowness and horror of grief. Recently married, she finds her album Psychopomp - written about her mother’s illness and death - enjoying surprise success; making waves in the indie-world and enjoying critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork and Spin Magazine. There’s a bittersweetness to it all, of course - being unable to share the success with her mother, for one, but also having to confront the looming spectre of the genetic illness that claimed the lives of both her aunt and mother. But if there’s one lesson Zauner seems to have learnt from her experience, it’s not to let the prospect of future suffering encroach on present joy. On Psychopomp’s “Heft” she wonders if she has the “same dark coming” that took her mother and aunt. If so? “Well then, fuck it all”, she declares resolutely.

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More about: 3booksJapanese BreakfastBook review