Korean Identity And Loss In Crying In H-Mart By Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart is a story about identity, relationships, and loss. Zauner chronicles the events of her growing up and her relationship with her mother through Michelle’s adolescence up until her mother’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent journey fighting it. Throughout this story, Michelle reflects on her Korean identity and how she fits herself into the world being half-Korean. When facing the loss of her mother, she attempts to connect with her Korean side through culinary dishes, making cultural food for herself and her mother as a means of comfort. Michelle travels to her home country, visiting family and discovering more about her mother through her relationships back home, unraveling the world of her mother outside of motherhood, discovering

In Chapter 8, she details her time in middle school when other kids began pointing out her Koreanness. She writes, “There was something in my face that other people deciphered as a thing displaced from its origin, like I was some kind of alien or exotic fruit… Until then, I’d always been proud of being half Korean, but suddenly I feared it’d become my defining feature and so I began to efface it” (Zauner, 140). She began to hide her Korean side. Her mother doesn’t ease her fears. Raising her concern, Zauner writes, “‘You don’t know what it’s like to be the only Korean girl at school,” I sounded off to my mother, who stared back at me blankly. ‘But you’re not Korean,’ she said. ‘You’re American.’” (Zauner, 141). All through her life, she felt this conflict between being American and Korean, and trying to find acceptance for who she is. She talks about feeling like she’s not quite Korean enough and not quite American enough, feeling stuck in the middle. In her adulthood, she continues feeling this frustration with her identity when her mother’s friend Kye comes to visit and care for her. Kye and Michelle’s mother connect with each other using Korean language, leaving Michelle and her father feeling left behind, unable to connect in that way. It is a complicated subject for Zauner and others who feel this mixed sense of identity, trying to fit in one way or another, often feeling inadequate on both