Analysis of Crying in H Mart: How Zauner Walks Readers Through Her Story

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    Crying in H Mart, published in 2021, is a memoir about the author, Michelle Zauner's, own experiences of being biracial with a Korean mother and father who is American with Jewish heritage. The memoir starts with Zauner grieving the absence of her mother in an H Mart, an Asian supermarket chain. She recalls her memories of grocery shopping with her mother and regrets her past selfish interactions as an immature daughter who thought her mother would stay with her forever. She even tries to blame clueless strangers in the market for her mother's passing away, questioning why her mother had to die when they got to live. Zauner then goes through her memories with her mother in chronological order, starting with when she was an infant to after her mother's death. 

    There is something in the way Zauner illustrates her memories and thoughts throughout the memoir that makes readers feel the heartbreak, joy, frustration, and so many other emotions firsthand. And this ability for readers to develop emotional connection to the author sprouts from her outstanding method of describing the significant individuals of her story. Each important figure is so well rounded and described, that the reader feels as if they have lived as Zauner and known these individuals themselves all along. The author's intricate descriptions of physical appearance are so well thought out, that even through short phrasal comments, readers are able to understand and feel connected to the author at the same time. In describing her mother having started to show external symptoms of her illness, she says, "Her hair was patchy, like an unloved doll" (93). She describes her mother's loss of hair in just 5 words, but the way she does it so strongly conveys the sadness of Zauner's watching her mother fall apart.

    Zauner's inclusion of carefully chosen memories in her memoir also play a major part in developing the reader's understanding of what each of the individuals mean to her. After she reveals her knowledge of her father's cheating on her mother to readers, she follows up by semi-attempting to justify him by describing his traumatic childhood and unstable adolescence: growing up with an abusive older brother and relying on drugs for most of his teenage years (87). But when she lies beside her unconscious, dying mother with her father on the other side, she reveals her "ugliest heart," thinking to herself, "It was supposed to be him... He was the former addict... Not my mother, who could do splits and still got carded at the liquor store." She then expresses a sort of frustration about the "unfair" situation, "My mother would have known what to do, and when it was all over, we'd reemerge entwined with each other, closer than ever. But my father was unabashedly panicked, openly scared in a way I wished he would keep from me" (151). She reveals her hidden feelings towards her father to allow readers to understand what she truly thought of him.

    The tinted glasses she hands to readers to view her story are, of course, biased and tend to limit perception. However, these glasses are really Zauner's eyes; they act as a cable connecting readers to Zauner. The deliberate techniques the author uses to write her memoir allow for readers to truly feel her because her writing includes bias and delivers information solely from Zauner's point of view and opinions. The author's careful choice of stories and words allow for the successful rounding out of featured figures, which furthermore allows for readers to truly connect to her and follow her throughout the memoir.