“Mom’s afraid you two will fight if you come,” my father admitted later. “She knows she has to put all her focus into getting better.” I assumed the seven years I’d lived away from home had healed the wounds between us, that the strain built up in my teenage years had been forgotten. Now we were closer than ever, but my father’s admission revealed there were memories of which my mother could not let go.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart“Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker. We’d giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking our soy sauce-stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart
CBR Bingo 15: Nostalgia square
(2 bingos: Sex to Europe and Hold Steady to Nostalgia)
Raw. There is no better word to describe the feeling this story evokes. It is a story with which we are all familiar. How many of us have witnessed the slow deterioration of a family member as they succumb to cancer or Alzheimer’s? It is heartbreaking and inescapable. It sucks the breath out of you one minute before rocketing you into a heart-racing panic the next.
This is the story of mothers and daughters and how the shared act of preparing and consuming food is a never ending love letter between generations.
Being an only child, twenty-five-year-old Michelle returns to her hometown of Eugene, Oregon, to care for her mother, who has received a late-stage cancer diagnosis. When Michelle and her father learn that the treatment was unsuccessful, Michelle spends every moment with her mother and father, doing her best to show them that she has become the loving, loyal daughter, proving that she is no longer the disrespectful and seemingly-ungrateful teenager she once was.
This book wraps its hands around your heart and squeezes until there is no air left in your chest. You feel the panic and the denial, looking for signs of hope when the chances of recovery are minimal. I wanted to hug Michelle. She could not do everything on her own, but she tried. When her mother felt pain, Michelle believed it was because she had not done enough. That she could have known something – administered the medicine sooner or brought her mother another blanket to ward off the cold. The more her mother’s condition deteriorated, the more Michelle tried to understand her. Even when their relationship was good, Michelle believed it was a blip; that they would go back to their own stubborn ways, blocking the other one out. The one way they could communicate was through food. Michelle’s mom would make her favorite foods for her when she visited home. Michelle would put aside her nerves long enough to call her mother for a recipe, or ask for the specific brand of seaweed or noodles her mother always bought at the local import shop in her hometown.
This book is a difficult read, but I’m so glad I did. The detailed descriptions of Michelle’s life growing up in Oregon and how it contrasted with her visits to her aunties and cousins in Seoul is breathtaking. The amount of text dedicated to the description of the foods prepared and consumed is substantial. Food is love. And what is a better way to show that you love someone than by preparing their favorite dishes? Showing them that you see them. That you know and love them, despite their flaws, and that you want them to feel happy and cherished.