Crying in H Mart

I like reading books about the second generation immigrant experience, especially when they talk about Asians growing up in America. This book was a sensation when it came out. The author was the daughter of a Korean mother and a Caucasian father growing up in Oregon and going to college in Pennsylvania. A few years after her graduation, she suddenly found out her mother was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. The themes of guilt, identity, individuality versus community, and problems with communication mix in this case with grief, anger, and acceptance, making it a compelling read. It's all expressed in a very forceful style that isn't afraid to go to uncomfortable places.

Growing up between two cultures can be confusing for a teenager. It's as though the misunderstandings and the baffling rules are just too much on top of trying to make your way through adolescence. That's the way it's described here in this book and to me it rings true. But at the same time people with these kinds of backgrounds also have wonderful experiences that other people don't get to have, which stick with them through the rest of their lives. The author writes about how significant it was to feel representation when she found out about Karen O of the band The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, another half-Korean, half-white woman singer and performer. And in a different way she also felt affirmed when she watched the YouTube videos by the Korean creator Maangchi showing how to cook Korean cuisine. A person who has only known the majority culture doesn't get to experience feeling seen this way.

There are lots of books that incorporate recipes along with the story they tell, but in this case we have a nonfiction memoir with cooking interludes, something a little different. There are no measures or precise quantities for any of the dishes for the reader, matching the way her mother cooked without cups and weights. Shopping and preparation of the food felt simultaneously unfamiliar even when the end result was completely familiar to her. To me, these foods are nothing like what I grew up with but I recognize this kind of dissonance, and how it ties back to culture. The author was quite familiar with her mother's home country by trips that they would take nearly every summer. What would it have been like for me if I could have experienced many of these food experiences in my parents' home country, a place I've never been? I never tried to picture it until reading about how that visceral tie was described here. H Mart, with its shelves of Asian ingredients, was one place that made it possible for her to reconnect in this country with that nearly abandoned side of her.

Besides the culture and language drama, I think there's also some interesting stuff here about the way in which a creative person sometimes unexpectedly comes into their own career. It's striking about how she talks about striving to make it in music for so long but only after practically giving up on making the dream a reality was she able to find a measure of international success. It is sad that she can only wonder what her mother would have thought about her making it so far.

I'm going to give this book my highest rating because I think it kind of perfectly depicts this kind of situation and so strongly relate to. It's like the perfectly seasoned dish. I don't know how one would follow this up with another work but I kind of hope she does.