Crying In H Mart [Book]
Book Overview: In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“If you are in pain––be it in life, work or love––reflect on a time you were hurting so deeply and so gutturally. If you retrace your steps and walk back to this broken place, you will surely find a bed of wildflowers growing there. Raid them. Cut them. Bunch them into a bouquet. Place them on your kitchen counter. On the days when your heart is so heavy, you wish you could pluck it out of your chest and wring it out in the kitchen sink––don’t. Instead, gaze upon the flowers on the counter and remind yourself that healing takes time.”
Cole Schafer
“The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil—rich, fertile soil. She wasn’t a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn’t run away from herself. She’d have to stay there and tend to that wasteland. She could plant a forest inside herself.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 286)
“She would never be ashamed for her own nature. She would see the doctor. She would make an appointment and continue to do and take and try whatever they advised. She wouldn’t run from her pain any more. She wouldn’t poison herself with the pressures of imagined perfection. She would see her own hurt, recognise it, and not imagine there was a life of unquestionable positivity and happiness she was being deprived from. She would accept the darkness of life in a way she never had, not as failure but as part of a totality, as something that threw other things into relief, into growth, into being. The ash in the soil.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 285)
“Stoicism is not just invulnerability…if such a thing even exists. Stoicism is also having the self-awareness to know when you are struggling. It’s having the courage to admit when you could use a hand. It’s having the wisdom not to pretend you know the answer (you can’t learn that which you think you already know, Epictetus says). It takes daring and toughness to go to therapy—perhaps more than just white knuckling it. It’s a brave thing to share your struggles with a friend or to hire a coach or expert to help you get better at something. It takes a confident person to ask a question or admit, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t be like the cowards who are too fragile or fearful to do this. Be truly courageous.”
Ryan Holiday
“The Buddhists believe that our presence can be healing; that by simply sharing space with another person and giving them our full, undivided attention, we can ease their suffering. Sometimes I wonder if the reason we don’t all feel so broken and lonely and insecure is because we rarely give each other our full, undivided attention.”
Cole Schafer