A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

I've wanted to read this for a while but have been delaying because I knew it would hit hard. We lost my mother-in-law last year, so while it was a million miles from what's depicted here, it still felt particularly raw. I cried my eyes out many times in this book, and I'm not sure I could have handled this being a longer book than it is.

Crying in H Mart is truly heart wrenching - but also exceeds all of my expectations in craft and enjoyment. I'm not much of a memoir reader, but now I have a new bar with which to judge. It is written with deep vulnerability and emotional depth, exploring themes of identity,  the complexity of loss, and very different languages of love.

I very much enjoyed the foreground given to food in this book, even if so much of what was being described was unfamiliar to me.

A couple of quotes I recorded as I went through:

'It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.'

'In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.'

'Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind.'

'The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.’

Five stars.