In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner 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. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband–her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Eric Kim is a New York Times staff food writer born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, by Korean immigrants. He worked his way through the literary and culinary world to eventually become a digital manager at Food Network and a senior editor at Food52, where he amassed a devoted readership for his "Table for One" column. Formerly a writing instructor at Columbia University, he has written for Saveur, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and The Washington Post and has just wrapped up his first cookbook, KOREAN AMERICAN (Clarkson Potter, 2022).