Writing & Journalism

SIX BURNING QUESTIONS FOR MICHELLE ZAUNER ABOUT “CRYING IN H MART”

IN 2016, Michelle Zauner, released her debut album, Psychopomp, under her musical identity, Japanese Breakfast. The album was a critical and popular success, appearing on multiple best-of lists. After two earlier albums with her band Little Big League, Zauner was quickly launched into a new level of her musical career. But the success was bittersweet. The album was written in the midst of grief, two months after Zauner’s mother succumbed to cancer in 2014, leaving Zauner motherless at 25.

Zauner’s relationship with her mother was fraught. A Korean immigrant with an American husband in the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon, Zauner’s mother did not have the same creative dreams for her daughter and their different upbringings often clashed. Many teens have rough relationships with their parents, of course, but most have the time to grow, mature, and reevaluate their adolescent conflicts, such as how different cultural upbringings may have intersected with general personality differences, combined with teen rebellion. Zauner, only 25, had little time to process these things during her mother’s lifetime. Thus, she found herself dealing not just with the loss of her mother, but also a struggle to understand where she would fit in as a biracial daughter without the nurturing guidance of a mother to help her understand half of her heritage.

WHY I’M SUPER ANXIOUS ABOUT THE END OF THE PANDEMIC

As someone with chronic illness, it’s been comforting to not be the only one who’s stuck at home this past year

The pandemic is finally winding down. While we’re by no means in the clear yet, the end is finally in sight.

Between the number of people vaccinated (20% of Americans have received at least one dose so far) and those who have a level of antibodies after contracting a natural case of Covid-19, experts believe we could be back to “normal” by summer or early fall. President Joe Biden boosted those predictions when he announced last week that anyone who wants a shot should be eligible for one by May 1.

That means by the time summer turns to fall, with any luck, your local pizza parlor will have opened its doors, your bookstore will have hired back much of its staff, and the local bar will show baseball games to full crowds cheering and booing. Grandparents will see grandchildren, weddings will resume, and friends will once again gather inside the homes we’ve been holed up in, alone, for more than a year.

We’re all looking forward to this. But there’s a part of me that doesn’t want the pandemic to end.

BATH HOUR

I run the bath at 3 a.m. Occasionally at 4 a.m., 2 a.m., 1 a.m., 5 a.m. Whenever my small body shivers with fever and can’t get warm, but more so, like this morning, when the pain builds like waves, like a California earthquake, spreading across my back and down my legs. Even at age twelve, I know the hurt starts in my belly, a twist of my diseased gut. By the time the pain peaks I swear it’s a tree, vines re-rooting all over my torso. 

The bath flows across my muscles, heats me from the outside in, warms the spasms deep inside me, calms my body during the stagnant night. 

I want my parents, but I don’t want to wake them.

While the water is only above my toes, I keep myself contained in a tight wad of limbs, my arms wrapped around my shins, chin resting on my knees, back arched, stomach tense like armor against jabs and left hooks punching at my organs from the inside. 

Older women tell me about childbirth, about the pain and how it’s unimaginable, but I think I can imagine, and I wonder whether they can imagine my pain, whether they’d do the same courtesy of trying to understand me, a child. But I don’t actually ask, I just stare. 

SWIPING THROUGH THE WANNABE WOKE
The Rise of the Faux Feminist

I don’t know how we got onto Elon Musk.

It was just the second date.

To be honest, I had probably brought it up. An off-the-cuff disparaging comment.

In my defense, this was the week when Elon Musk lost his goddamn mind on Twitter. First, he’d attacked journalists and “the media.” Then he went on to rant that he wanted to create a website where the public could judge journalists — a Yelp for journalism, if you will. He wanted to name it after a Russian propaganda paper — Pravda. A fucking Russian propaganda paper! Musk was outraged when folks dared to compare him to Trump. This is how Trump got elected — he tweeted.