Korean American Balancing Through Culinary Memory in Crying in H Mart
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Michelle Zauner opens her New York Times bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart with a sentence that links grief to food consumption: “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” While the narrator recalls how racial melancholia plagues her early life, she also relates how she learns to move away from the teenaged depression and social struggles that burden Asian Americans beset by the model minority role to a more balanced sense of who she is. Ultimately, she does so, Zauner suggests, by mastering the preparation of Korean cuisine. In addition to the scholarship on racial melancholia, I have benefited from studies on the global influence of Korean culture as well as from recent analyses of food memories and cultural identity. Bolstered by these insights, I track Zauner’s development of Michelle’s bicultural citizenship from racial melancholia to a balance between Korean and American cultures by means of her individual reacquaintance with culturally informed memory as represented in the foods Michelle’s mother prepared for her representing profound love and by H Mart as a touchstone for Korean culture. In doing so, I explore Zauner’s in-depth portrayal of cooking as an expression of love and the importance of remembering in Michelle’s hard-won understanding of her Korean mother, family, and heritage.
Abstract
Michelle Zauner opens her New York Times bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart with a sentence that links grief to food consumption: “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” While the narrator recalls how racial melancholia plagues her early life, she also relates how she learns to move away from the teenaged depression and social struggles that burden Asian Americans beset by the model minority role to a more balanced sense of who she is. Ultimately, she does so, Zauner suggests, by mastering the preparation of Korean cuisine. In addition to the scholarship on racial melancholia, I have benefited from studies on the global influence of Korean culture as well as from recent analyses of food memories and cultural identity. Bolstered by these insights, I track Zauner’s development of Michelle’s bicultural citizenship from racial melancholia to a balance between Korean and American cultures by means of her individual reacquaintance with culturally informed memory as represented in the foods Michelle’s mother prepared for her representing profound love and by H Mart as a touchstone for Korean culture. In doing so, I explore Zauner’s in-depth portrayal of cooking as an expression of love and the importance of remembering in Michelle’s hard-won understanding of her Korean mother, family, and heritage.