If you liked
Books like Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
Crying in H Mart is Michelle Zauner's memoir of her Korean mother's death from pancreatic cancer and the Korean food that connected the two of them. The breakout literary commercial memoir of 2021 and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs of grief, food, and Korean-American identity. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
Pachinkoby Min Jin Lee
“Pachinko by Min Jin Lee 2017 review. Four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan, beginning with Sunja's pregnancy by a married Korean gangster in 1933 Busan. The Apple TV+ adaptation source and one of the canonical contemporary Korean-American literary novels.”
Solitoby Javier Zamora
“Solito by Javier Zamora 2022 review. The 1999 migration of a nine-year-old Salvadoran boy on foot and by sea across two months. The canonical contemporary memoir of unaccompanied minor migration to the United States.”
Educatedby Tara Westover
“Educated by Tara Westover 2018 review. The memoir of growing up in a survivalist Idaho family that kept her out of school until age seventeen, and her subsequent education through Brigham Young University and Cambridge. The PEN/Bingham winner and one of the canonical contemporary memoirs.”
Hamnetby Maggie O'Farrell
“Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 2020 review. The death of William Shakespeare's eleven-year-old son and the four years before Hamlet is written. The Women's Prize winning novel about marriage, grief, and the play that came out of it.”
Tom Lakeby Ann Patchett
“Tom Lake by Ann Patchett 2023 review. A mother tells her three adult daughters about her brief romance with a future movie star while picking cherries during the COVID lockdown. Patchett's late-career literary commercial novel and the most-discussed Meryl Streep audiobook narration of 2023.”
Becomingby Michelle Obama
“Becoming by Michelle Obama 2018 review. Michelle Obama's memoir, from her South Side Chicago childhood through the Obama White House. The political memoir that sold seventeen million copies, and the one that genuinely earns its bestseller status.”
FAQ
Common questions about Crying in H Mart read-alikes
- What is the closest match for Crying in H Mart?
- Solito. Both contemporary American memoirs by writers of color reckoning with the parent generation. Different subjects (Zauner on grief and food, Zamora on migration) but the same patient memoir-of-loss register.
- I want another book about food and family.
- The catalog is light on the specific food-memoir subgenre. Outside the catalog, Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone, M. F. K. Fisher's collected essays, and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential are the canonical picks.
- I want another book about Korean and Korean-American experience.
- Pachinko (Min Jin Lee) is the canonical novel pick — four generations of a Korean family in twentieth-century Japan. The catalog is otherwise light on Korean-translated fiction; Han Kang's The Vegetarian and Hwang Sok-yong's At Dusk are the canonical recent picks not yet reviewed here.
- I want a novel that does the same emotional work.
- Hamnet (the death of a child handled across thirty patient pages in the back third) and Tom Lake (the mother-daughter conversation around old loss) are the closest matches in our fiction catalog.
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