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Michelle Zauner’s Bittersweet Journey
Japanese Breakfast singer-songwriter discusses
Crying in H Mart, her moving new memoir about her late mother and the Korean food they both loved
By
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
When Michelle Zauner lost her mother in 2014, the only thing that got her through was food. The Korean American musician, who has won acclaim for the dreamy indie rock she records as Japanese Breakfast, found that learning to cook comforting dishes like
jatjuk (pine-nut porridge) and
kimchi-jjigae (a savory, spicy stew) allowed her to grieve for her mother, who’d cooked for her for years but had never taught her how. “There was no sense of urgency to learning that [before],” says Zauner, 32. “I never thought I was going to have so little time with my mom.”