Michelle Zauner, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Thank you for having me.
Um, let's start off with one of the biggest conundrums I found
while trying to do research on you,
and that is, in your bio on Twitter,
you say you are Korean. You say this everywhere you go.
And yet, and yet your stage name is Japanese.
And I'd love to know, like, the creative inspiration
behind how you chose your-your name as a performer onstage.
Sure. It's unfortunately not a very interesting story.
I started the band as a side project
in 2012 or 2013
with no idea
that it would grow into what it is now
or that I would ever be talking
about my Korean identity so much.
And I just saw a picture of Japanese breakfast
on the Internet and thought, "That sounds nice."
-And so I... Japanese Breakfast. -(laughs)
And, uh, yeah,
it's unfortunately not-not the most fitting name,
especially now that I've written a book
that's so much about Korean food. (chuckles)
You know, you've gone from being a darling in the music scene
to now being so many people's favorite writer.
You are now a New York Times bestselling author.
Congratulations on that.
Um, I think your book was number two
on the New York Times Best Seller List
right behind George W. Bush, and I think
your response to that was my favorite. You said,
"Damn George W. Bush and his paintings."
-(laughing) -But... but yet, talk to me
about why you thought, "You know what?
"I'm gonna write a book about my life,
"I'm gonna write a book about proudly Korean,
"and being proudly Korean and my family,
and I think this will resonate with everyone."
I didn't think much about it resonating
with anyone, to be honest.
It came from such a personal place
with such a sense of urgency, I think,
to sort of bear the wounds of-of caretaking
and losing someone to illness,
and, uh, this very unique experience that I went through,
which was learning how to cook Korean dishes
as a way to commemorate my mother
and a way to move past trauma
and preserve my cultural heritage.
Yeah, the title in and of itself is beautiful.
It's Crying in H Mart.
And I love how throughout the book,
it is really is an homage to your Korean heritage
and to H Mart itself. Why did you feel like,
"You know what? This is what.. This is the title of the book"?
'Cause titles, I feel, always hold so much meaning
beyond just what we're reading on the... on the cover.
Yeah, H Mart just became a real refuge for me
after my mother passed away.
After going to Eugene, Oregon, and living as a caretaker
and watching my mother's health deteriorate,
I really had a difficult time
remembering my mother before she was sick.
And that was so heartbreaking to me.
And it wasn't until I went to H Mart
and I found, like, a can of sweet red beans
that I had this beautiful memory of my mom and I
in Seoul every other summer, enjoying patbingsu,
Which is, like, this Korean shaved ice dessert.
And I just became addicted
to sort of searching for that feeling.
Um, such an important way of navigating my grief.
And, yeah, I just cried a lot in H Mart,
and it was a very healing experience for me.
When you were writing this, you have to relive a lot of it.
Was that a therapy for you,
or did that just reignite a lot of those traumas
and that pain that you had previously experienced?
I think it was both, you know.
I think as an artist, there is this desire
to poke at the wound in this way.
But that's sort of the...
Nick Cave calls it the pact that you make with love.
Grief is the pact that you make with love.
And, um, I feel like it was really necessary for me
to look back at that part of my life,
and analyze it and understand it and investigate it.
And it was ultimately really healing for me.
I think I made it a little bit easier
for myself by sort of wading in through
these more pleasant memories of my childhood
and what made my relationship with my mother so interesting.
But there was also this part of the book that I just...
I felt so upset that I had never read something like this
that would have warned me that this is what illness looks like.
-Wow. -And I felt this real need
to tell everyone and warn everyone that this is...
this is what living close to death looks like.
Did you find writing the book helped you forgive your mom
for some of the issues that the two of you went through?
Absolutely. I think that even more so,
I was able to forgive myself
-for what I put my mom through in my adolescent years. -Wow.
So I think that... I think that everyone...
A lot of people can relate
to that sort of tumultuous adolescence
and that struggle for independence.
And especially as a young creative
trying to find my voice, that was a major point
of contention between my mother and I.
And so I feel like through writing this book, I found,
you know, not only a lot of forgiveness for the way
that she felt this need to sort of protect me
-from this lifestyle... -Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
and the financial risk and struggle of that.
But I also was able to forgive myself
for what I put her through.
And in the end, I found a lot of success as a creative
on my own terms in this way that she never got to saw...
never got to see.
So I feel like I was able to, uh, forgive myself
for that in a way, as well.
You-you also had to find your love for being Korean again.
And you-you share that so beautifully in the book.
You know, growing up in a community
that was predominantly white.
You share candidly how you wanted
to discard all parts of yourself that could be seen as not white.
What was it like? And-and how would you talk
to other young kids in your position who go,
"I just... I just want to be one of the kids.
"I don't want to be Korean. I-I just want to fit in.
I don't want to be Asian at all"?
How did you rediscover your joy and your celebration
of yourself and your heritage?
To be honest, I don't feel like I was able to find that
until after my mom passed away.
And it's my hope that a lot
of the sort of younger generation is, um,
already kind of learning how to celebrate their differences.
Um, and a big part of that is the online community
and-and how we're able to share these sort of experiences.
Uh, whereas, when I was younger,
it felt so isolating and, like, something to shirk.
-So... -Yeah, I can imagine.
Like, unfortunately, I just sort of came into it sort of later.
Um, and I guess my advice would be, you know,
I hope that people are able to be proud of...
of their background before they sort of come into it
a little bit too late, you know?
'Cause it was, I'm sure, such a pain for my mom
to witness me sort of, uh, trying
to shirk off that part of my identity for quite some time.
You, um... you are still in music.
You are still an artist.
Um, you know, you're going
to continue your journey in that realm.
The world is going to open up again.
You're going to go back out on tour.
Do you think that anything you've written
in the book will now affect what kind of music
you would like to make or how you would write your music?
Have you found anything bleeding in from one medium to the other?
Definitely. They're really in conversation with one another.
And I feel like after writing my first two records,
which were largely about grief and loss,
and then an entire book about that experience,
I felt really ready to sort of start this new chapter
and run to the other spectrum of-of human experience.
So the new album, which comes out on June 4,
is called Jubilee, and it's about joy.
And, um, I feel like
through the process of writing all this material,
I was sort of giving myself permission
to really embrace that and feel that
and fight for it in my life.
And that's what the new album is about.
I love it. I feel like it's gonna be the complete journey.
We get to cry with you in H Mart, and then, in June,
we get to experience some Jubilee.
Uh, thank you so much for joining me on the show
and congratulations on writing a truly astounding book.
Thank you so much for having me.