Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) Interview on Crying In H Mart with Kinokuniya New York.
CRYING IN H MART
A Memoir by Michelle Zauner
Author & Musician Michelle Zauner was kind enough to join Kinokuniya New York’s Rafael Ruiz to talk about her life and her recent New York Times Bestseller, Crying In H Mart! Watch the full interview and sample reading from Zauner, or simply click “Shop Now” to make an order.
Interview Summary
Kinokuniya New York’s Rafael Ruiz began an engaging conversation with Michelle Zauner by listing many of her accomplishments including the release of two studio albums under the stage name “Japanese Breakfast,” performing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, her viral essay featured in The New Yorker, and becoming a NY Times Bestselling Author.
[Becoming a NY Times Bestselling Author] was a momentous moment in my life. I cried a lot yesterday and celebrated very hard. Im very proud of myself and it felt like a wonderful gift. It’s still sinking in. I found out yesterday. My whole publishing team surprised me on Zoom (Disguised as a tech call for a bookstore event). I worked so hard on this book and endured so much agony during the time of writing it – What the book was about. It felt like a full circle moment where I can put that experience to bed in a big way.
The beginning of Zauner’s writing career began recently even after earning a degree in Creative Writing. Her first professional essay was featured in Glamour Magazine in 2016 due to her culinary relationship with trending YouTube star Maangchi. This caused Zauner to take a closer look into Korean cuisine and how it involved past memories of her mother.
Michelle Zauner’s memoir compels readers to reflect on their own relationships and life experiences after reading about Zauner’s regrets and acceptance. After Interviewer Ruiz mentioned his own reactions to the book, she communicated how she felt during its creation after her mother’s passing; a major focus point of the book:
It sparked a really happy memory of my mother that I wasn't able to access for a long time. I was really kind of scarred by the caretaking experience. Dishes, groceries, ingredients, reminded me of different parts of my life and my childhood and these really pleasant images of my mother before illness had entered our lives.
The conversation shifted into the sensitive topic of race. Being born in Korea, living in America, and developing the stage name “Japanese Breakfast” has certainly caused some confusion over the years.
I’m not half Korean or half American. I am full Korean. Full American. Or whole of both of these parts. I think I actually feel like [it’s] so much of my identity… not quite belonging in either of those worlds… so I think for me that was like a really interesting thing to explore… a natural reason why I became so interested in making art…I wanted so desperately to experience understanding and a sense of belonging…I think I needed to sort of create that for myself.
Regarding using the name “Japanese Breakfast”:
It was really stupid. It was a side project I never anticipated going anywhere. Uploading demos with animated gifs of food. One was a beautiful gif of a Japanese breakfast. Such a soothing and comfortable image. I want people to wonder what it is and what they get to discover.
After this fantastic discussion, Rafael Ruiz asked Michelle Zauner to provide a pitch for her book and to read a passage of her choosing. She was gracious enough to oblige:
It’s a story about mothers and daughters. It’s a story about grief. It’s about learning to cook Korean food in the wake of loss as a way to preserve my mother's memory and our shared culture.
Passage from Crying In H Mart read aloud by Michelle Zauner :
What I never seem to forget is what my mother ate. She was a woman of many usuals… Half a patty melt on rye with a side of steak fries to share at the Terrace Café after a day of shopping. An unsweetened iced tea with half a packet of Splenda which she would insist she'd never use on anything else. Minestrone she'd order steamy hot. Not steaming hot, with extra broth from the Olive Garden. On special occasions, half a dozen oysters on the half shell with a champagne minionette and steamy hot French onion soup from Jake's in Portland. She was maybe the only person in the world who would request steamy hot fries from the Mcdonald's drive-through in earnest. Spicy seafood noodle soup with extra vegetables from Cafe Soul which she always called “Seoul Café” transposing the syntax of her native tongue.
She loved roasted chestnuts in the winter though they gave her horrible gas. She liked salted peanuts with light beer. She drank two glasses of chardonnay almost every day but would get sick if she had a third. She ate spicy pickled peppers with pizza at Mexican restaurants. She ordered finely chopped jalapenos on the side. She ordered dressings on the side. She hated cilantro, avocados, and bell peppers. She was allergic to celery. She rarely ate sweets with the exception of the occasional pint of strawberry Haagen-Dazs, a bag of tangerine jelly beans, one or two chocolate truffles around Christmas time, and a blueberry cheesecake on her birthday. She rarely snacked or took breakfast. She had a salty hand. I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you; not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didn't eat seafood, if you had a large appetite. She remembered which side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over it'd be set with a heaping double portion served alongside the various other preferences that made you you.
Who is Michelle Zauner?
After two studio albums and a third on the way, Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner decided to take a shot at writing, which was met with extraordinary success. Zauner often pulled from personal life experiences to shape her music and style. After writing an essay for The New Yorker, her personal story about hardship and her mother's passing went viral. This notably inspired the full release of the New York Times Bestseller, Crying In H Mart.