Crying in H Mart

Zauner decides on the phrase “LOVELY MOTHER, WIFE, AND BEST FRIEND” for her mother’s headstone (158), as “lovely” was a word her mother loved. She struggles to write a eulogy while her father plans the rest of the funeral, thinking that it’s difficult to write about someone you know so well and worrying that she subconsciously still thinks poorly of her mother for what Zauner sees as a lack of ambition.

Nami Emo and Seong Young arrive for the funeral, and Zauner is struck by how affected Nami Emo is by the death of her sisters. She gives Nami Emo the matching necklace she and her mother shared after Eunmi’s passing, which moves her.

The funeral is a Christian service; Zauner finds this strange, and she regrets not being more involved in the planning. When they go to the gravesite, they see that the headstone says loving, not lovely, which her father says is “bullshit” (162). At dinner that night, Zauner orders the most expensive thing on the menu and weeps openly throughout the meal.

The next morning, Zauner wants to do something for Nami Emo and Seong Young, so she looks up a recipe for doenjang jjigae and comes across a woman on Youtube who goes by Maangchi. She learns the recipe from the video and goes to Sunrise Market in her mother’s sandals to get the ingredients. When she serves the dish, Nami Emo is in disbelief. Zauner worries that it isn’t good, but she feels useful, saying, “after all the years the two of them had looked after me, I could do this one small thing for them” (165).

That evening while her father takes Nami Emo and Seong Young back to the airport, a package is delivered. Inside is a jade teapot that belonged to Zauner’s mother as well as a touching letter from her mother’s art teacher, Yunie. In it, Yunie speaks of how happy she was to have Chongmi in class and how she held onto the teapot because she thought it might help her get better. The letter is written in English, and Zauner wonders if it was done for her sake.

Zauner gathers up her mother’s art supplies and looks through her sketchbooks. She sees her mother’s talent develop and notes how her mother kept adjusting her signature, trying to find the perfect version of herself before settling on “Chong Z” (168). She wonders if her own creativity came from her mother after all. She realizes that her life with her mother was cut short at the moment she was truly getting to know her.

After the funeral and some time managing her mother’s affairs, Zauner and her father decide to take a trip to keep their mind off their grief. They choose Vietnam, traveling from Hanoi to Sapa by train and eating their way through the countryside. Zauner is sometimes mistaken for her father’s girlfriend, which mortifies them both, but after explaining that they are father and daughter, they evade follow-up questions about Zauner’s mother. Zauner feels numb and as though the vacation is wasted; she prefers to go to bed early and longs to be at home disassociating with video games.

When they get to Huê, things get better until a dinner where Zauner’s father embarrasses her, first by loudly telling the waitress that Zauner was a waitress, too, then by calling himself and Zauner foodies (a term Zauner despises), and finally by sending back a fish salad that Zauner doesn’t feel like eating, which Zauner considers incredibly rude to their waitress. She scolds her father, and he responds by saying, “Your mother warned me not to let you take advantage of me” (176). Zauner is angry but doesn’t say the things she wants to say; still, the argument escalates, and Zauner leaves her father at the restaurant.

She decides to walk back to the hotel room, planning to find her own way back to Hanoi and perhaps return home early. When she gets back to the hotel, she sees her father at the top of the stairs; she expects him to be angry, but he looks somber. She watches him, thinking about the life he was cheated out of, but she isn’t ready to forgive him. Instead, she goes to a bar down the street called Café L’ami.

Inside, they are set up for music, and the hostess starts singing. A young Vietnamese woman joins Zauner’s table; she tells Zauner that she comes to the bar because she’s sad and wants to be a singer, and Zauner tells her about her mother’s death. The woman, Quing, tells Zauner that she should sing something. Zauner gets up and sings “Rainy Days and Mondays.” The bar applauds, and Quing gathers up a fake rose and offers it to Zauner. Quing then sings, “My Heart Will Go On,” and the two spend the rest of the evening talking about their lives and dreams.

The next morning, Zauner meets her father for breakfast. They don’t mention their fight, and the rest of their trip is uneventful.

After a long flight home, Zauner falls asleep, but she is woken by a phone call: Her father was in a car accident and needs her to come meet him. He stresses that she bring mouthwash, which makes it clear he’s been drinking. When she arrives at the scene, she sees his car has rolled, and an ambulance and the police are on the scene. Zauner’s father doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but she insists.

When Zauner meets him at the hospital, he’s being questioned by the police. When Zauner tells them her mother just died, the police let her father’s story—that he fell asleep at the wheel—stand.

After the accident, Zauner is incensed with her father and scared that his accident may have been intentional; rather than confront him, she turns to cooking lavish, complicated dinners like pot pie and their Thanksgiving meal. One night over a lobster dinner Zauner made, she and her father reminisce about Chongmi’s love of lobster roe; neither of them find any in their lobster tail.

Peter arrives after his fall classes are finished and moves in with them. While looking for the Christmas decorations, Zauner grows frustrated with all the things her mother saved until she finds a pair of her baby shoes. She is struck by how many things her mother saved that were either for her or her eventual child. Still, she undertakes the task of clearing out her mother’s closets and keepsakes; without her mother, Zauner cannot see the value in her possessions, and she invites her friends over to pick through her mother’s clothes as well. When she finds the notebook she used to keep track of her mother’s medications and illness, she rips it to pieces.

After all this, Zauner has a craving for jatjuk, the simple meal that Kye frequently made for Chongmi while she was ill. Zauner turns back to Maangchi’s Youtube channel and learns how to make the relatively bland porridge. While eating it, she realizes that this is what she wanted when she was making all those lavish meals.