Grief, Gochujang, and the Love That Lingers: Crying in H Mart Is the Memoir to Read This Mother’s Day

Today is Mother’s Day, and Day 5 of our AAPI Voices Series brings a book that couldn’t be more fitting—or more soul-stirring.

We’re talking about Crying in H Mart, the bestselling memoir by musician and writer Michelle Zauner (you might also know her as the frontwoman of Japanese Breakfast).

This isn’t your average “I miss my mom” memoir. It’s a symphony of food, memory, identity, and grief—a powerful exploration of what it means to lose a mother who is also your last link to your cultural roots.

Zauner takes us into the aisles of H Mart—the beloved Korean grocery store chain—where dried seaweed and rice cakes become talismans for a past she’s desperate to hold onto. As she mourns her Korean mother’s death from cancer, she also mourns the slow slipping away of language, rituals, and a version of herself that only her mother understood.

It’s tender. It’s raw. It’s the perfect book to honor the mothers who shaped us—especially the ones we’re still trying to understand.

📝 Crying in H Mart debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for weeks, eventually being named one of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books.

🎥 A film adaptation (with Zauner herself writing the screenplay and working on the soundtrack) is currently in production, making headlines again just this month.

🍜 H Mart saw a real-world spike in Gen Z and Millennial shoppers after the book’s release—because food is memory, and nostalgia now comes in kimchi jars.

🎶 Zauner’s band, Japanese Breakfast, released an album around the same time. Both works are meditations on loss, identity, and healing through art.

In today’s WHTTR episode, we sit with the tough questions this book asks:

• 🥢 What do we inherit beyond recipes? How grief becomes a cultural reckoning.

• 👩‍👧 Daughterhood and Distance: Why so many AAPI daughters felt seen—and cracked open.

• 💬 Language Loss: How not speaking fluently still hurts like heartbreak.

• 🧠 Asian American Identity & Motherhood: What Zauner’s story tells us about being raised between cultures—and mourning in both.

Whether you’re remembering your mother, grieving one, celebrating one, or navigating complex feelings—this episode is a heartfelt tribute to maternal bonds in all their messy, sacred forms.

Michelle Zauner is a Korean-American musician, writer, and multi-hyphenate artist whose lyrical honesty transcends genre. Born in Seoul and raised in Oregon, Zauner found international acclaim with her band Japanese Breakfast before publishing Crying in H Mart in 2021. The memoir was her literary debut—and it cemented her as one of the most resonant AAPI voices of her generation.

✨ Fun Fact ✨

Zauner taught herself to cook traditional Korean dishes by watching Maangchi on YouTube—a journey many second-gen kids will recognize instantly.

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📚 Purchase Crying in H Mart on Amazon

🎧 Listen to the audiobook on Audible

The grief is personal, but the hot soup in silence? Universally healing.

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Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, mom-figures, aunties, big sisters, grandmothers—and the book-loving Whttries raising little readers of their own. 💐

📅 We’ll be back tomorrow with Day 6 - our last day of the AAPI Voices Series.

📲 Follow @whttr_podcast on Instagram and Threads for tributes, reels, and your favorite tearjerking food moments.

💌 Forward this to someone who’s missing someone today. Let them know it’s okay to cry in aisle 3. We’ve all been there.

Honor love. Hold memory. And maybe call your mom.

Until then:
📖 Who has time to read? We do—and today, we read to remember.

The WHTTR Team

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