The H Mart is a Korean supermarket chain, and for Michelle Zauner it represents everything she lost when her mother died of cancer. This memoir explores grief through food, tracing how the Korean dishes her mother prepared became a way to maintain connection after death. Zauner, the singer and guitarist of the band Japanese Breakfast, grew up caught between her Korean mother's expectations and her American adolescence. She rebelled, moved away, started a band that seemed unlikely to succeed. When her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she returned home to care for her and began learning to cook the foods she had taken for granted. The book moves between the intensity of illness and the longer arc of a life: childhood in Oregon, teenage conflicts, early adulthood in Philadelphia, marriage, and the building of a musical career. Zauner writes about Korean food with sensory precision, making readers taste the textures and feel the labor involved. She also writes about grief honestly, including the anger and guilt and physical symptoms that mourning brings. The book became a phenomenon because it captured experiences that many readers recognized: the complicated love between immigrant parents and American children, the search for identity through heritage, and the persistence of loss. Readers need not share Zauner's background to be moved by her story.