Memories linked to food, likes and dislikes, are often the most significant.
In Proust, it is a madeleine dipped in a cup of tea which begins for the narrator toIn Search of Lost Time the exhumation of “the immense edifice of memory”. A fascinating space-time portal of “involuntary memory” which closes 3000 pages later. Some particularly well-read scientists even speak of it as the “Proust effect”.
For American Michelle Zauner, born in Seoul in 1989 to a Korean and an American, memories taste like fermented cabbage or sesame oil.
This is what she says in Crying at the supermarket. The original title, Crying in H Martmore precisely, refers to a well-known American chain of Korean supermarkets, where “no one puts cans of Goya canned beans next to bottles of sriracha.”
“Since mom died, I’ve been crying in the aisles of H Mart,” begins Michelle Zauner. “I look for my childhood there,” she adds, explaining how Korean food has always been a “pure and lasting source of maternal approval” for her. Between the shelves, she finds her mother’s language, the food she loved, a little of what they both had in common.
Learning in 2014 that her mother had stage IV cancer, Michelle Zauner put her life on hold – music, her boyfriend and her three food jobs – and flew to Oregon to support her in her fight. against illness. Make up for lost time, make provisions for the future. And maybe even reconcile a little.
Because relationships with her mother were not easy for the rebellious and “tortured” teenager that she was. Michelle Zauner recounts how she tried to escape her mother’s “stifling supervision” who criticized her for everything from her attempts to be the perfect daughter. Her choice to make music – singer and guitarist in a then unknown pop group, Japanese Breakfast – and to condemn herself to a “broke artist’s life”.
Every two years as a child, she also remembers that she would spend six weeks in the summer with her mother in Seoul, in the heart of the Gangnam district. Quite a contrast for her, who grew up “stuck in the middle of the woods” near Eugene, Oregon.
During chemotherapy treatments, just six months old, she will take care of her mother and try to cook her favorite meals.
After the death of her mother, she prepares a recipe every day from Maangchi, an endearing Youtuber that all Korean food lovers end up discovering. Up to kimchi, the “ultimate test” – the fermentation of which, she reminds us, rather than a form of control over death, is in reality “another life” – and to the kimchi fridge left to her by her mother. she will find full of old photographs.
Touching learning story, book of mourning, lucid exploration of often complex mother-daughter relationships, Korean culinary travelogue, essay on Asian-American reality, Crying at the supermarket appeared on the bestseller list for almost a year New York Times and was one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021.