Author: Michelle Zauner
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 4 out of 5
Pages: 256
Date Started: 2 January 2022
Date Finished: 4 January 2022
This book was recommended by Goodreads after I read my previous book, which was also a memoir.
The book is all about the relationship of the author Michelle with her mother Chongmi. The relationship is bound by Korean food, where Chongmi is from. The author talks about how every food her mother prepared triggered the memories, yet at the same time, brought solace and peace. The book walks through the memory of Michelle with her mother from childhood to turbulent teen years, to becoming her mother's caretaker, to missing her.
It was a good read overall. The story starts slow, and just like anyone, the author talks about the love-hate relationship she had with her mother. The turbulent teen years and fights she had with her mother were bad and that ruined their relationship, but I was happy to see that she let go of the disagreement and made peace with the situation by becoming her mother's full-time caretaker.
I really liked the way Zauner wrote about the childhood and adolescent years with her mother. She has continued to give a good picture of the ups and downs everyone has with their parents while growing up. After she becomes the caretaker of her mother, even with the resentment, she realizes that her mother is helpless and that she needs to make peace with her condition. Many memoirs I have read about losing someone generally end after their loved one passes away, but I was glad to read how Zauner has written about the grief she faced and tried to connect with her roots and how she let go of her mother, yet keeping her memory alive.
Some of the situations she explained were hard to read. The suffering due to cancer treatments was written so well that I had blurry vision many times. There is a lot of connection and mention of food, rather the book is more about Korean food than the story the author wants to narrate.
Favorite lines from the book:
Food was how my mother expressed her love.
I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families. How many are thinking of them as they bring trays back. Which ones are like me, missing the people who are gone from their lives forever?
My mother and I had always agreed that we'd rather end our lives than live on as vegetables.
When I asked her what she'd want to come back as she always told me she'd like to return as a tree.
We were waiting for her to die.
I imagined our four bodies in aerial view. On the right side, two newlyweds beginning their first chapter, on the left, a widower and a corpse, closing the book on over thirty years of marriage.
Her body hasn't been hers for a while now, but the thought of removing it from the house was terrifying.
Where do you go after you witness death, I wondered.
It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.
When one person collapses, the other instinctively shoulders that weight.
