Crying In H Mart: Michelle Zauner and Dua Lipa On Food, Memory & How Grief Can Remake Who We Are

Conversation with Michelle Zauner

Dua Lipa welcomes memoirist and Japanese Breakfast frontwoman Michelle Zauner for a warm conversation about Crying in H Mart—a book about growing up Korean American, her complicated but loving relationship with her mother, and the grief that followed her mother’s death from cancer.

Food, memory, and heritage

Zauner explains how learning to cook Korean food and visiting H Mart helped bring back memories of her mother before she became ill. Food became a way to reconnect with both her mother and her Korean heritage. It also helped her work through the feeling that she had failed as a caretaker because she didn’t know which foods her mother could eat when she was sick.

Dua relates this to the Albanian food her own mother cooked, which helped Dua stay connected to her roots.

Writing and identity

They discuss how writing the memoir let Zauner explore more than songwriting could, and pushed her to practice empathy by showing her own flaws as well as other people’s. Zauner describes author Michelle as “smarter” and “more sober” than her more intuitive Japanese Breakfast self, though both personas, she jokes, are “slightly more wholesome” than she really is.

Zauner also talks about writing a screenplay adaptation of the memoir, calling the process exciting but very different from working in music and publishing.

Her mother’s reaction to her success

A lighter highlight comes when Dua asks how Zauner’s mother might react to her success. Zauner imagines her mother would be proud—but would first ask, “Where is my bag?” and then immediately wonder why she hadn’t won the Grammy.

Food favorites and tour requests

Zauner still hasn’t found the right seaweed, even in Korea, where grocery stores offer too many choices. She lives near a traditional market and enjoys buying side dishes and vegetables from its vendors.

For a quick Korean dish to make for friends, she recommends tteokbokki. Her favorite twist is baking extra-large rice cakes and eating them with sesame oil and soy sauce. On tour, she usually asks for local hot sauce, while her saxophonist makes a more specific request: sourdough from a local bakery.

Personalities featured

• Dua Lipa — host
• Michelle Zauner — author and Japanese Breakfast musician