A Conversation with Michelle Zauner: In‑Person & Online
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Partners
Venue
Town Hall
1119 8th Avenue, Downtown Seattle, Seattle
From Michelle Zauner, the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, Crying in H Mart is an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. Join us for a special SAL Presents conversation with Michelle Zauner, celebrating the memoir’s paperback publication.
With humor and heart, Crying in H Mart, 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, 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.