Catalina

“If I’m being honest, there’s a lot of anger. I’m angry at this old Korean woman I don’t know, that she gets to live and my mother does not, like somehow this stranger’s survival is at all related to my loss.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Now, more than ever, I wished desperately for a way to transfer pain, wished I could prove to my mother just how much I
loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body
close enough to absorb her burden. It seemed only fair that life should
present such an opportunity to prove one’s filial piety.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“The memories I stored, I could not let festered. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared I was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, and in every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“When one person collapses, the other instinctively shoulders their weight.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart