Michelle Zauner, aka Japanese Breakfast, will be releasing her anticipated upcoming memoir, Crying In H Mart, on April 21st, 2021 via Knopf. The book, available for pre-order now, is based on her viral 2018 The New Yorker essay.
Of Crying In H Mart, Zauner said: “My mother passed away almost six years ago and ever since, my life has felt folded in half, divided into a before and after her death, my identity and my family having been fractured in the wake of her loss. I’ve spent the past six years processing grief in the best way I knew how-through creative work. I wrote two albums worth of material in an attempt to encapsulate all of that heavy darkness, confusion and loneliness, and then I spent another three years writing pages and pages to try and capture my mother’s brilliant character and spirit, what it was like to be raised by a Korean immigrant in a small west coast town with very little diversity, the intense shame I felt towards my mixed race identity and how my embrace of Korean food and culture helped me come to terms with that upbringing, allowed me to reconnect with her memory.“