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Crying In H-Mart Sparknotes

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Crying in H Mart, a memoir written by Michelle Zauner, is widely famous because of her ability to engage a universal audience about her own experiences dealing with loss, describing feelings of nostalgic desire, complex emotions, and familial conflict many individuals resonate with. The memoir narrates Zauner’s mother’s fight against cancer, focusing on how their mother-daughter relationship changed as she began losing her mother to the disease. Zauner winning and surviving the battle against her mother’s cancer was a situation beyond her control, therefore, she became determined to help her mother’s fight and her own mental state through food. Korean cuisine is heavily integrated in the memoir, playing an important factor in portraying Zauner’s …show more content…

Zauner explains how being at H Mart reminds her of these shared memories between her and her mother, causing her to feel emotional grief about no longer having those experiences with her mother since Korean food was the method in which her mother showcased her love. In the first chapter of the memoir, Zauner exposes the reader to the world of Korean food and the cooking lifestyle associated with it. Through heart-warming imagery and detailed descriptions of memories in H Mart, Zauner conveys the emotional nostalgia when describing comfort food and one’s cultural traditions. Various readers with no familiarity with Korean cuisine find themselves appreciating the background knowledge of Korean traditions in reference to food, for example, cooking seaweed soup specifically for birthday celebrations and rice cakes for death …show more content…

Zauner provides the reader with a deep understanding of famous Korean dishes cooked in Asian households and how each dish has its own cultural meaning, forming an experience to the reader in which they feel a connection to the food and an attachment to the familiar emotions evoked by Zauner. She attempts to begin forming a stronger bond with her mother and her Korean culture, cooking dishes familiar to Zauner like gyeranjjim, cream soup, and tteokguk, that resurface treasured memories shared between the two. Her determination in comforting her mother with dishes that taste like home was futile because of the lack of appetite her mother was experiencing due to cancer. Her mother’s rejection to her home-cooked Korean dishes caused Zauner to feel distant from her mother, no longer feeling the bond once shared of Korean food between the two. Zauner transcends to the reader the emotional tie between food and identity as she felt disconnected from her Korean heritage. With Zauner’s limited knowledge in Korean cuisines, she was unable to manage cooking ideal Korean dishes that could combat the mouth sores her mother was experiencing because of the cancer, causing her to lose her mother and be unable to connect with her through familiar Korean dishes. Although the

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