Love, food and ethnicity

Essentially, most of this novel is a paean to the author’s dead mother, and the negotiation of a mixed race child (Korean American) of her Korean identity.  

The novel starts by telling us “Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart” (p3). That opening line contains pretty much the gist of the novel – the attachment of the protagonist to her mother, and the role Korean food played in their relationship. It is more memoir than novel, as Zauner works through her identity issues as well as grief in this piece of writing. There is all the expected problems of those of the second generation diaspora and mixed-race commonly face – lack of familiarity with the mother tongue, feeling inadequate in both identities, spending the earlier years wishing to blend better into mainstream (white) American society, then spending the adult years trying to get to know her non-American identity better.  

It is quite curious how Zauner seems to associate herself more as a Korean than as an American, although she grew up in America, but perhaps identifies far more strongly with her mother’s culture than with her father’s. (She is definitely much closer to her mother than to her father, and it comes across in this memoir that she feels her mother loved her in a way no one else ever could again, whereas she does not seem to be able to depend on her father, for love or much else.) Zauner depicts herself as an outsider in Korea when she visits, only managing to be part of the society there through her mother and her kind relatives; but in America, Zauner seems to identify as Korean and keeps looking for places where she feels comfortable and at home and at ease, such as in a H Mart.

H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The H stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to “one arm full of groceries.” H Mart is where parachute kids flock to find the brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It’s where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, the beef and rice cake soup that brings in the New Year. It is the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it’s the only place that truly understands how much garlic you’ll need in the kind of food your people eat.

p3

The writing depicts a lively, feisty mother, quick to upbraid her daughter, but wholly protective of her. She teaches her daughter to “save ten percent” of herself, even with people she loves. She shares all the foods she loves with her daughter, and it is through food that they bond:

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 banchan side dish you emptied first so that the next time you were over I’d be set with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you

p14

The fun of this novel lies in no small part with the endless litanies of foods Zauner loves and knows and learns to cook. Food being their currency of exchange, learning to cook when her mother becomes ill, is of course her way of attempting to show how much she loves her mother, and how hard she is trying to be a good daughter. The memoir takes us through her mother’s losing fight with cancer, and Zauner’s eventual loss of the mother who loomed so large in her life. Even her marriage to a very loving man seems to take a relatively background position in her life, at least, through the window of this memoir. Objectively, there is nothing much which is actually really special about Zauner’s mother – she had her little ways which were endearing or admirable, her dignity and exacting nature and strength are celebrated by Zauner – but actually, what makes her extraordinary in her daughter’s eyes is just how much her mother loved her, rather than for any intrinsic achievements of her mother or any exceptional qualities. This comes across as a very honestly presented memoir, full of love and loss, always tied to food associations. 

Zauner writes of how she and her mother, jetlagged in Seoul on their visits and unable to sleep, would be fellow conspirators in their family’s kitchen.

Standing at the counter, we’d open every Tupperware container full of home made banchan, and snack together in the blue dark of the humid kitchen. Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker. We’d giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardly raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking out soy sauce-stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, “This is how I know you’re a true Korean”.

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The memoir delights the reader by listing many delicious-sounding Korean dishes, but the litany of food is likely intended to do more than just to delight the reader, it is a lament as well as celebration of the author’s memory of her mother and their shared Koreanness. Foods eaten in celebration, foods for comforting those recuperating from illness, foods in abundance, foods clearly designed for sharing, are how many of the diaspora tap into their culture and perform that part of their identities. Buying, making, eating, are all part of the performance, hence the H Mart being the platform on which so much is played out for the author.  

It is not a read which is going to yield deep insights into the Korean psyche – but it does share with searing sincerity the inadequacies felt by the diasporic and mixed-race Korean in America, their clutching at fragments of precious Korean identity, their joy in the very limited parts of their heritage which they are able to access. The reader only ever sees Zauner’s mother through Zauner’s eyes – which is to say almost only as a mother rather than a person in her own right – but this is perfectly reasonable given this is Zauner’s memories of dead parent; Zauner lovingly and with great detail shares with the reader the texture of their particular relationship. A very accessible book, and if the language is not exceptional, its contents are interesting and thoughtfully communicated.