Olivia: Okay Jackson, I'm putting you on the spot. Review today's book in exactly five words. Jackson: Heartbreak, kimchi, identity, music, love. Olivia: Perfect. Mine is: "Grief tastes like mother's cooking." That's the soul of Michelle Zauner's stunning memoir, Crying in H Mart. Jackson: And Michelle Zauner is not just any author. Many people will know her as the brilliant musician behind the indie rock band Japanese Breakfast. She’s a two-time Grammy nominee. Olivia: Exactly. And this book, which became a massive bestseller and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Memoir, didn't start as a book. It began as an essay she wrote for The New Yorker in 2018. It went viral almost immediately. Jackson: I can see why. It taps into something so raw and universal. The core of our podcast today is really an exploration of how we preserve the people we've lost, not just in our minds, but in our senses, our actions, and our very identity. Olivia: And for Zauner, the primary sense, the primary language through which she understands love, loss, and herself, is taste.

Jackson: You mentioned taste, and the book opens with this incredibly powerful line: "Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart." H Mart is a Korean-American supermarket chain. It’s such a specific, public place to anchor such a private emotion. Olivia: It is, and that’s the genius of it. For Zauner, H Mart isn't just a grocery store; it's a sanctuary. It’s a museum of her mother's love. She walks past the banchan refrigerators—the little side dishes—and remembers her mother’s soy-sauce eggs. She holds a package of dumpling skins and is transported back to her kitchen table, folding minced pork and chives with her mom for hours. Jackson: Wow. So every aisle is a memory. Olivia: Every aisle is a memory, and every memory is a potential landmine of grief. She finds herself sobbing near the dry goods, and she asks this devastating question: "Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?" Jackson: That’s heartbreaking. It’s not just about losing her mom; it's about losing her guide to an entire half of her identity. But why is food the main vehicle for this? Olivia: Because, as she states so plainly, "Food was how my mother expressed her love." Her mother wasn't one for verbal affirmations or easy hugs. Her love was in the details—in remembering which side dishes her daughter emptied first, in preparing a feast of her favorite foods when she came home. Love was an action, and that action was almost always culinary. Jackson: That makes so much sense. It’s a love language. Olivia: It's a powerful one. And it was a language Zauner learned to speak to win her mother's approval. There's this incredible story from a trip to Seoul when she was a child. They go to the Noryangjin Fish Market, and the first dish that arrives is sannakji—live octopus, with the tentacles still writhing on the plate. Jackson: Oh boy. I’m not sure I could handle that. Olivia: Her mother, without flinching, eats a piece and encourages her to try. And Zauner, desperate for her mother's approval, does it. She eats the wriggling tentacle. And her family just erupts in praise. She says in that moment she realized that while she struggled to be 'good' in other ways, she could "excel at being courageous" through food. Jackson: That’s a great way to put it. She found her way to connect. But that also means that after her mother is gone, those same foods must be incredibly painful reminders. Olivia: Exactly. It’s a total double-edged sword. She describes seeing a child in H Mart eating ppeongtwigi—these big, styrofoam-like rice-cake frisbees that she and her mother used to eat after school. A simple, happy memory. But in the present, the sight of that snack just unleashes this wave of sorrow. The joy of the memory just sharpens the pain of the loss. Jackson: So the very language her mother used to show love becomes a source of profound pain. It’s a beautiful and tragic paradox. Olivia: It is. And that paradox is really at the heart of her entire relationship with her mother, which was loving but also incredibly fraught and complicated.

Jackson: Yeah, let's talk about that relationship. Because as much as this is a book about food and grief, it's also a raw look at a really difficult mother-daughter dynamic. Olivia: It absolutely is. Zauner describes her mother's love as "brutal, industrial-strength." It was a love that was deeply protective but also intensely critical and demanding. She tells this story from her childhood where she was climbing a tree her mother had repeatedly forbidden her from climbing. She falls, scrapes her stomach bloody, and twists her ankle. Jackson: And her mom rushes over to comfort her? Olivia: Not exactly. Her mother descends on her "like a murder of crows," screaming about how she’s damaged herself and will have a scar forever. There's no comfort, only fury. And as a child, it was terrifying. But as an adult, Zauner understands that this rage came from a place of deep, almost painful care. Her mother felt her daughter's pain as her own affliction. Jackson: That's a really complex way to show love. The extended info we looked at mentioned that some readers found this dynamic to be almost abusive, and it’s a point of controversy for the book. It’s not a simple, heartwarming relationship. Olivia: Not at all. And Zauner doesn't shy away from that. The book is unflinching about their conflicts. As a teenager, Zauner felt suffocated. She was struggling with depression, and her mother saw it as self-pity, a luxury. This led to a huge rebellion, with Zauner finding her identity in music, specifically in artists like Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who was also half-Korean and shattered the "docile Asian stereotype." Jackson: So music becomes her escape from her mother. Olivia: It becomes her escape, and also the source of their biggest confrontations. The conflict culminates in this absolutely explosive fight just before Zauner leaves for college. They're arguing in her bedroom while she's packing. It gets physical. Her mother tackles her, pinning her to the ground. Jackson: Whoa. Olivia: And in that moment, with tears and spit falling on Zauner's face, her mother screams the most devastating thing imaginable: "I had an abortion after you because you were such a terrible child!" Jackson: Oh my god. I can't even imagine hearing that from your own mother. How do you even begin to process that? Olivia: You don't. Not for a long, long time. Zauner carries that wound for years. And what's so powerful about the memoir is that the healing, the understanding, only comes after her mother is gone. During a trip to Korea for her honeymoon, she's talking with her Aunt Nami. She finally works up the courage to mention this secret. Jackson: What does her aunt say? Olivia: Nami’s response is simple and practical. She explains, in broken English, that her mother felt it would be "too hard with two baby" in Korea. It wasn't a punishment or a reflection of Zauner's worth. It was a pragmatic, heartbreaking decision made by a young woman in difficult circumstances. In that same conversation, Zauner mentions her mother’s other cruel motto: "Save your tears for when your mother dies." Jackson: Another brutal line. Olivia: But then Nami reveals something stunning. She says, "Halmoni also say this one. You and your mom very much same." Her grandmother said the same thing to her mother. It wasn't a personal cruelty; it was an intergenerational inheritance of stoicism, a piece of cultural armor passed down from mother to daughter. Jackson: So her entire understanding of her mother gets reframed after her death. The things she saw as personal attacks were actually part of a much larger, more complex cultural and familial history. Olivia: Precisely. And this is where her bicultural identity becomes so central. She feels like she's constantly trying to decipher these secrets without the key, because her mother, the key, is gone. There's a poignant scene near the end where she visits a Korean bathhouse, a jjimjilbang. An ajumma, a middle-aged woman, is scrubbing her down and asks if she's Korean. Zauner explains her heritage, but when the woman starts speaking rapid-fire Korean, she can't keep up. Jackson: The connection breaks. Olivia: The connection breaks. And she has this terrifying realization. As a kid, she desperately wanted her Koreanness to go unnoticed. Now, she's terrified that this stranger can't see it in her, that without her mother, that "precious half" of her identity is "beginning to wash away."

Jackson: That’s such a profound fear. After all this pain, this complicated love, this struggle with identity… how does she find a way forward? What's the ultimate takeaway from living with this legacy? Olivia: I think the healing, for her, isn't about "getting over it" or finding closure in a conventional sense. It’s about integration. It’s about actively tending to the memories and the heritage her mother left behind. And she finds the path to do that, fittingly, back in the kitchen. Jackson: Of course. It all comes back to food. Olivia: It all comes back to food. After trying and failing with traditional therapy, she turns to YouTube. She finds a Korean cooking vlogger named Maangchi. And day after day, she starts meticulously recreating the dishes of her childhood. Kalguksu, jjajangmyeon, and finally, kimchi. Jackson: She learns to make her own kimchi. Olivia: Yes. She goes to H Mart, buys the earthenware pot, the napa cabbage, the gochugaru, all of it. And she spends hours in her tiny New York apartment, following Maangchi’s instructions, painting the spicy red paste between the cabbage leaves. She says the labor was "soothing." It was a way to embody her mother's spirit, to reclaim her heritage on her own terms. Jackson: That’s so powerful. She’s not just making food; she’s making a connection. She's becoming her own archive. Olivia: That's the perfect way to put it. She even uses this beautiful metaphor of fermentation. She says, "The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended." Jackson: Wow. So grief isn't something to be buried. It's something to be cultivated. Tended to, like a garden, or a fermenting jar of kimchi. You have to engage with it, care for it, and transform it into something that nourishes you. Olivia: Exactly. It becomes a living, effervescent part of you, not a dead weight. And through that process, her mother's legacy doesn't just survive; it evolves and lives on through her. Jackson: That’s a beautiful and hopeful way to look at it. It makes you think, what are the 'recipes' or traditions from our own families that we need to learn to keep our loved ones alive within us? Olivia: That's a question I think this book leaves every reader with. And it's a powerful one. We'd love to hear from our listeners. What's a food or a tradition that connects you to someone you love or have lost? Find us on our socials and share your story. Your memories are worth tending to. Jackson: Absolutely. This book is a testament to that. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.