Critical Food Studies Reading Group: Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart
Monday 10 February 2025, 5-6:30pm
Lincoln EPA Centre, Lady Abraham House, Museum Road, Oxford OX1 3PX
Free, but registrations is required
If you plan on attending this event, please register here!
For Hilary’s first reading group, we will be discussing Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. The book has been described as a ‘New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.’
We will read this novel alongside other media including the New Yorker article it is based on, a YouTube cooking channel featured in the book, and Michelle Zauner’s own discography.
We plan on providing lots of Korean and other snacks to go with the discussion, so please do rsvp here if you are coming.
If you aren't able to get your hands on a full copy or read it in time, don't worry! We recommend reading 'Crying in H Mart', a New Yorker piece by Michelle Zauner (attached here as a pdf if you don't have a subscription) that became the basis of the book, and the following online excerpts:
As the author is herself a successful musician, we thought it might be nice to include a few other multimedia sources. You might like to listen to the music of Japanese Breakfast, especially her album Psychopomp, a response in a way to her mother's illness. The book frequently refers to the cooking YouTuber Maangchi, and you can check out two recipes mentioned in the third excerpt above recipe 1 and recipe 2 . Zauner and Maangchi also have an insightful conversation about the evolution of Korean-American cuisine with Sarah Lee, which you can watch here.
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Critical Food Studies Network is part of TORCH Student Networks
