My friend Evin has the best description of this in her short review which helped solidify some of my confusion with the show: it’s “a beautiful meander,” as opposed to a narratively driven memoir as you might expect.
Zauner takes us through the confusing, complicated relationship she had with her mother through the language that should be familiar to anyone vaguely well versed in the ways of the Asian immigrant parent: food. Descriptions of and names of food are everywhere–this is not a book to eat while you are hungry, even if you are, like me, a vegan who usually finds Korean food spectacularly unwelcoming!
It’s not to say that this book wasn’t moving and touching, but I surprisingly did find myself not on the verge of tears nearly as much as I thought I would be given the subject matter. Child/parent dynamics + death? It’s like waterworks central for me, but somehow there’s a bit of a remove that made it easier to get through this book without becoming a blubbering mess. I’m not sure that’s that Zauner had in mind, but it felt true to the spirit of the book, which is at its heart an extended meditation on the bonds between mother and daughter who were often at odds.
Perhaps this book is better thought of as a snippet of time, a sense of what made Zauner tick before the success that she’s received which casts everything in a different light. What would her mother have made of her successful music career? We’re treated to her mother’s change of heart due to the cancer, but I wonder if it would have been as hard won if it had been because of success
