Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Write up by Moira Conlan, Director of Library and Archives and Tim Poole, English Faculty
This summer's All-School Read will be Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. The book is a memoir about identity, family, and understanding. In it, Zauner grapples with her own self-conception as a multiracial, Asian-American woman with a White-American father and Korean immigrant mother. That identity is tested when her mother is diagnosed with, and eventually succumbs to, cancer. Throughout the treatment process, Zauner learns more and more about her mother, and comes to lament her own distance from her mother's Korean identity. Questions of where we belong and who creates that belonging arise throughout the book. When the people who build belonging for us are no longer with us, what is left to us? Zauner's memoir invites readers to grapple with these questions alongside her, and we invite the entire Gunn community to do the same. Reflect on your own identity and the communities and people who helped shape it.
Chosen by a team of faculty, this New York Times best-selling memoir will give our community space to navigate the universal experiences of grief and belonging. Collaboration with the Fall Term Speaker Series will create connections through Zauner's narrative. We will examine how the community contributes to a sense of belonging and the formation of identity in the individual, and what that looks like in lived experience. Support will be provided for students who need it while tackling these complex emotions.
Enjoy taking this highly personal journey through Crying in H Mart.
