‘What does it mean to taste something and be transported to so many places at once, all of them a piece of home? To be half elsewhere all the time, half-here and not-here.’
Have you ever smelt something cooking that you used to eat often and instantly been transported back to a moment in time? For me, it’s roast potatoes and apple pie. Every time I taste either of those classic English delicacies I feel as though I’m sat back at my childhood dining table on a Sunday afternoon, surrounded by family and meaningful conversation. Now that I’ve moved away from home, whenever I come back for a weekend and eat my mother’s roast dinner, I’m reminded of the meaning of ‘comfort food’.
It is this term which perfectly summarises the idea which both Michelle Zauner and Nina Mingya Powles explore in their respective memoirs, ‘Crying in H Mart’ and ‘Tiny Moons’. Both of these books, aside from making me insatiably hungry for Asian food, detail the powerful interconnectivity between food and our sense of self.
Immortalising Zauner’s late mother, ‘Crying in H Mart’ is a stunning, heart-breaking memoir which intimately dissects the intricacies of identity, love and loss. The book’s dedication reads ‘for 엄마, meaning ‘mom’; and it is clear from the first chapter that Zauner’s mother is exactly for whom this work is intended. At times, it felt almost intrusive reading such personal descriptions of their relationship; with Zauner sparing no details on difficult periods such as her tumultuous adolescence and her mother’s battle with pancreatic cancer, which forms the core of the book.
Alongside this exploration of grief, Zauner navigates the complexities of her Korean-American identity. Reconciling the two cultures to which she belongs, in between the harrowing extracts chronicling her mother’s illness, Zauner weaves beautifully vivid passages describing all different types of Korean food, using language steeped in nostalgia and love. Through these stunning recollections of their mutual love of food, Zauner both preserves the memory of her mother and celebrates the heritage they shared, describing that it is Korean food which helps her to return to these family ties – “in the H Mart food court, I find myself again, searching for the first chapter of the story that I want to tell about my mother”.
Just as food can help us feel closer to the people we love, it also has the capacity transport us back to certain places or evoke certain feelings. Prefaced as documenting ‘a year of eating in Shanghai’, throughout ‘Tiny Moons’ Mingya uses food as a creative vehicle for preserving memories of her time studying in the city. As was the case with ‘Crying in H Mart’, ‘Tiny Moons’ felt deeply personal, as though I was reading Mingya’s diary or dipped right into her thoughts. As a poet, Mingya’s writing is lyrical, beautiful, and highly emotive, her words evoking a certain sense of nostalgia within the reader, despite us having not experienced these memories first-hand. The collection is not structured according to a linear timeline, but instead follows a more stream-of-consciousness, fragmented style reminiscent of memory itself. In each section, Mingya paints little yet vivid vignettes of her core memories that she experienced throughout her year, all of which have food at its core. Similar to the concept of photography, through her musings on food Mingya captures detailed snapshots into her present, perfectly preserving the thoughts and emotions which she experienced in each moment in time.
Above all, these two stunning memoirs taught me that food is ultimately so much more than just fuel or substance. In the final pages of her collection, Mingya wonders about the other people sitting around her in a Korean restaurant ‘What memory are they reliving? Where are they trying to reach? Who are they desperately trying to reach?’ These three simple questions perfectly encapsulate the true power of food – its ability to reconnect us with both the people and places that we love.
Izzie Naish Writer @readbyizzie
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