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In this story of family and food, grief and joy, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school; of struggling with her mother’s 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, 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 pancreatic 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 honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread. ‘As good as everyone says it is and, yes, it will have you in tears.