Michelle Zauner Press Reviews
Michelle Zauner's Crying In H Mart is as good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears. An essential read for anybody who has lost a loved one, as well as those who haven't. - Marie Claire
I love Michelle Zauner's beautiful, moving and insightful book about love and loss, grief and identity and the role of food in all that. It is brilliant. -- Claudia Roden
The book's descriptions of jjigae, tteokbokki, and other Korean delicacies stand out as tokens of the deep, all-encompassing love between Zauner and her mother, a love that is charted in vivid descriptions of her mother after death; in a time when people around the world are reckoning with untold loss due to COVID-19, Zauner's frankness around death feels like an unexpected yet deeply necessary gift. - Vogue US
A beautiful, honest and stylish account of grief, food and heritage. The way Zauner writes about food and how it acts as a bridge between her and her mother, her culture, her sense of self, is brilliantly written. -- Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby
Crying in H Mart stunned me - with its truthfulness and the force of its yearning. Beautiful, intimate, powerful, it is an unforgettable portrayal of grief and the bond between mother and daughter. -- Catherine Cho, author of Inferno
A gripping, sensuous portrait of an indelible mother-daughter bond that hits all the notes: love, friction, loyalty, grief. All mothers and daughters will recognize themselves - and each other - in these pages. -- Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
Zauner brings dish after dish to life on the page in a rich broth of delectable details, cultural context and the personal history often packed into every bite. . . [Crying in H Mart] will ultimately thrill Japanese Breakfast fans and provide comfort to those in the throes of loss while brilliantly detailing the colorful panorama of Korean culture, traditions and - yes - food' - San Francisco Chronicle
Crying in H Mart is a warm and wholehearted work of literature, an honest and detailed account of grief over time, studded with moments of hope, humor, beauty, and clear-eyed observation. It is not to be missed. - Seattle Times
Crying in H Mart is palpable in its grief and its tenderness, reminding us what we all stand to lose. - Vulture
It is [Zauner's] ability to convey how her mother's simple offering of a rice snack was actually an act of the truest love that leaves the most indelible impression. - Refinery 29
Incandescent. - Electric Lit
A book you experience with all of your senses: sentences you can taste, paragraphs that sound like music. [Zauner] seamlessly blends stories of food and memory, sumptuousness and grief, to weave a complex narrative of loyalty and loss. -- Rachel Syme
A wonder: A beautiful, deeply moving coming-of-age story about mothers and daughters, love and grief, food and identity. It blew me away, even as it broke my heart. -- Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
When a loved one dies, we search all of our senses for signs of their presence. Zauner's ability to let us in through taste makes her book stand out-she makes us feel like we are in her mother's kitchen, singing her praises. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)