90 pages • 3 hours read
Michelle ZaunerCrying in H Mart
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Where Are We Going?”
Zauner recounts a visit to see Eunmi in Seoul after Halmoni died. During the visit, Eunmi brought up a game she played with a coworker. She presented Zauner with five animals and asked which order she would leave them behind on a journey. The animal you choose to keep is meant to say something about who you are: the lion represents pride, the horse signifies career, the cow suggests wealth, the lamb is love, and the monkey is a child. Zauner chose to keep the monkey; Eunmi kept the horse. Zauner asked if Eunmi played this game with Chongmi, and Eunmi said Chongmi chose the monkey as well.
A few years later, Eunmi was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Eunmi was 48 years old, had lived a straightlaced life, and never knew love. Eunmi died on Valentine’s Day, and her last words were, “Where are we going?” (112).
Zauner and her parents flew to Seoul for the funeral, a three-day affair. After, Zauner and her mother sorted through Eunmi’s belongings, which were left to Zauner and Seong Young. Notably, they found a necklace that Chongmi bought for Eunmi; Chongmi said she would take it and get Zauner a matching one. While leaving Korea, Zauner felt as though her connection to Seoul had been severed.
Chongmi took an art class and grew closer to people in the community after her sister’s death, but her biggest takeaway was that “you could go through chemotherapy twenty-four times and still die, and that was a trial she was unwilling to endure” (114). After Chongmi’s second round of chemotherapy, Zauner returns to Philadelphia while they wait for results on whether the tumor has shrunk.
Zauner goes on tour with her bandmates and Peter, who is starting a job as an adjunct professor soon, but Zauner feels that touring has lost its excitement. While she’s in Tennessee, her father calls: The tumor has not shrunk, and Chongmi is determined to stop chemo treatments. Chongmi takes the phone and tells Zauner that she wants to go to Korea to show Zauner all the places she hasn’t seen yet, followed by a week in Jeju. As they are making plans, Zauner breaks down, and her mother comforts her.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Living and Dying”
On the way to the airport, Zauner tells Peter that she thinks they should get married. He demurs by squeezing her hand. After the long flight, Zauner arrives at Nami’s apartment to find her mother feverish in Nami’s bed after a very bad flight. Zauner insists that they go to the hospital, despite the family’s fear that she may not be allowed to leave again.
Chongmi is in the hospital for an extended time, forcing them to cancel the trip to Jeju and their return flight. She suffers badly, with symptoms that multiply and worsen. She is unable to eat or use the restroom on her own, and Zauner notes that “[t]here was no embarrassment left, just survival, action and reaction” (122).
In the mornings, Zauner goes to get various treats from French-Korean patisseries and other shops to remind her mother of good things; Chongmi despairs that Zauner must rinse off kimchi before she can taste it and says she has nothing to look forward to. Zauner counters by saying her mother is looking better, even beautiful, which cheers her a bit. Then Chongmi complains about how her husband is a bad caretaker; the two dance around the likelihood that after Chongmi is gone, Zauner and her father will not be close. Chongmi sums it up with, “You’ll do whatever you have to do” (124).
As Chongmi’s condition worsens, Zauner’s father grows angry in the hospital and accuses Seong Young of withholding information from him. The doctor arrives and explains that Chongmi has gone into septic shock and must be put on a ventilator. Zauner and her father find themselves on the hospital rooftop drinking beers, discussing what to do and how long they will keep Chongmi intubated. Neither is up to the discussion. When they go back inside, Chongmi is awake and alert, and they take it as a sign that they should make plans for a medical evacuation back to Oregon while they can.
While they make plans, Zauner steps out to call Peter. She brings up getting married again, and he hesitates; she insists that she wouldn’t be able to forgive him if he saw it as something possible in their future but wanted to wait until it was the right time, as she cannot imagine getting married without her mother there. He agrees, and they make plans for a wedding, with Zauner hoping that having this to look forward to will give her mother a reason to keep fighting.
Chapter 11 Summary: “What Procellous Awesomeness Does Not in You Abound?”
Before describing the events of her wedding, Zauner relates how she met and began seeing Peter. For Zauner, it was love at first sight when she saw him singing “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” at a karaoke night with friends. Afterward, she spent six months pursuing him and helped him get a job at the Mexican restaurant she worked at. During restaurant week, when things were expected to be very busy, Peter didn’t show up; Zauner learned he’d been attacked in a random act of violence that nearly killed him and left him with a broken orbital bone. The next morning, Zauner went to the hospital with flowers and books. After he was released from the hospital, Peter’s feelings for her were clearly reciprocated.
Now the two are getting married in three weeks, and the wedding planning is having the desired effect on Zauner’s mother: Peter is flying back and forth to plan, and Chongmi is invested in all the arrangements, distracted somewhat from her illness.
Still, plans for hospice must be made, and Kye returns to convert Chongmi to Christianity, which she begrudgingly accepts to appease her friend. Zauner’s mother has never been religious, though she believes in reincarnation and would like to return as a tree. A moment when Zauner and her mother go through her jewelry box to decide what Zauner should take seems the closest Chongmi comes to spirituality.
In the mornings, Zauner and her mother walk around the house so she will be strong enough to slow dance with Peter. LA Kim arrives and takes over the cooking, but when she puts chicken in her nurngji, Chongmi finds the taste too strong, prompting Kye to kick LA Kim out of the kitchen; LA Kim helps Zauner prepare the celebratory galbi for the wedding instead.
The wedding takes place in the backyard, with a tent and beautiful flower arrangements. The morning of the wedding, Zauner goes to Chongmi for her approval; a lifetime of intense scrutiny means Zauner feels truly beautiful when her mother approves.
At the wedding ceremony, Peter has very long, prosaic vows (which include the phrase that titles this chapter), which Zauner can’t help but laugh at. Her own vows touch on what she’s watched her parents go through during her mother’s illness, and how Peter’s own actions have shown her what love really is. During the dance with Peter, Chongmi looks happy, and Zauner realizes Peter will be “the last man she ever approves of” (143). After the dance, Chongmi is tired and leaves the wedding. Relieved that her mother was able to be at the wedding, Zauner relaxes, and the young people head downtown to the hotel where Zauner and Peter are staying for a wild night of partying.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Law and Order”
After the wedding, things are quiet. Despite her father’s attempts to plan a trip to wine country, Zauner knows reality is setting in. A hospice bed is delivered, but they don’t use it. Zauner and her mother watch an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio in bed, and guest Mariska Hargitay brings up the grief she still feels over her mother’s death. They both become emotional, and Chongmi speaks of how, when Zauner was a child, she would cling to her all day; now here they are clinging to each other.
Kye returns from a trip gambling in the Highlands, still a little drunk and excited that she has won a TV. When Chongmi whispers something in Korean to Kye, Zauner’s father grows angry that she won’t share what was said, and he and Kye have an argument. Kye insists on leaving right then, even though Zauner’s father pleads that his wife will die soon and needs her friend. Zauner tries to stop Kye as well, telling her to at least wait until morning, but Kye is adamant and has a car come. Zauner’s mother isn’t upset that Kye is leaving; she simply says, “I think she had fun” (149).
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
The title of Chapter 9, “Where Are We Going?”, is a question that resonates in in the text several ways. These are Eunmi’s last words, an exclamation of existential fear after a long, horrifying illness, but they also present perhaps the most important unasked question of the game that she and Zauner play together. The game, which is designed to show a person what they value most, has symbolic significance for Zauner, who didn’t expect that her answer would mean she values having a child or that she would choose the same answer as her mother. The text never indicates that Zauner wants children of her own, but the parallels between her and her mother become clear throughout the book, and it can be argued that Zauner’s purpose in writing the book is discovering the meaning of her role as her mother’s child.
Eunmi’s death has a profound effect on Chongmi’s decision to end treatment rather than continue suffering. Zauner rarely engages in the trope of cancer as a battle to be won, and she similarly treats her mother’s decision as an awful but understandable choice. The disastrous trip to Korea is presented as a bare, unromantic look at Chongmi’s deterioration and the way it strains Zauner’s relationship with her father (who still struggles to cope with his wife’s illness). There’s no romanticism in Chongmi and Zauner’s understanding of what may come next for Zauner and her father, either; Chongmi has no illusions about their relationship and gives Zauner tacit permission to let it grow distant when she says, “You’ll do whatever you have to do” (124).
Zauner’s marriage to Peter may be seen as rash, but Zauner draws parallels to the beginning of their relationship, which was also sparked by tragedy. In her view, it’s natural to reevaluate priorities in times of crisis, and their relationship is strong. That much is reflected in Zauner’s wedding vows, which detail how Peter has been there for her. She sums up her feelings about the decision to get married when she says, “love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments” (143). Peter is not a significant factor in this narrative, but he is the steady hand throughout the events detailed in the book. His willingness to accept Zauner for who she is—which began with his game eagerness to engage in Korean culture and attend a Korean bathhouse when Zauner’s parents came to visit early in their relationship—is an undercurrent throughout the memoir.
The marriage also serves its intended effect on Zauner’s mother, as Chongmi regains a sense of purpose in her desire to be involved in the wedding despite her suffering. Zauner’s need for her mother to be there is natural, of course, but it’s also rooted in the need for her mother’s acceptance, a desire fostered throughout her life thanks to her mother’s honesty and strictness. After the wedding, Chongmi and Zauner settle into an acceptance that is punctuated by the Mariska Hargitay interview they see. Chongmi saying, “here you are—still clinging to me” (146), is prophetic, as Zauner will spend the time after her death creating art about and searching for connection with her mother.
