by: Michelle Zauner
Goodreads description:
A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.
Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓 (for being well written) 🤓🤓🤓 1/2 (actual content)
Michelle Zauner can really weave a story. This was a sad retelling of a mother and daughter at the end of the mother’s days. I listened on audible and the author narrated it. All I can say is SAD…I was walking around my neighborhood listening and crying and absorbing the loneliness she felt. There is an absurd amount of detailed food description. I get that it bonded her with her mother, but enough already! I want to check out an H Mart…have any of you readers ever been to one? There’s one in Cary, NC.
Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓3/4
This book is terribly sad. It really is a story, or memoir, about grief, and dealing with the death of one’s mother at too young of an age, not as a child, but at the age where mothers are so very important in a woman’s life (not to imply that mothers are not ALWAYS important, but you get my drift). How was that for a run-on/stream of consciousness sentence?! Its right there with “It was a dark and stormy night…”; however, I digress. The book is very good, the grieving is palpable, and even though it is non-fiction, I highly recommend it. Still not a fan of Korean food though, and there is a lot of description about it in this book…kimchi? Not for me!
Helen and Holly Hit the Books 