SSJCPL (Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library) discussion

Happy August fellow readers! This month we are reading our top Battle of the Runner Ups book. I selected the book with the second highest amount of votes from December 2022-May 2023. The book chosen was Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

I hope you join us in reading this book this August. If you haven't already check out the SSJCPL Podcast on your favorite podcast network. Happy reading!