Michelle Zauner’s Book ‘Crying in H Mart’ Is Getting A Movie Adaptation

Michelle Zauner has become one of indie’s finest multi-hyphenates over the past few years. In 2018, the Japanese Breakfast artist penned an essay for The New Yorker titled Crying In H Mart, which was so well-received that Zauner ended up expanding it into a book of the same title. Now, her New Yorker essay is evolving once again: According to The Hollywood Reporter, the book is now being adapted into a movie.

Zauner said in a statement, “It is a surreal thrill to have the opportunity to memorialize my mother in film, and I consider it of the highest honor to pursue that task alongside creative luminaries such as Stacey Sher, Jason Kim and Orion Pictures.”

A publisher’s statement about the book (which should largely also apply to the movie) reads:

“In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band–and meeting the man who would become her husband — her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying In H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.”

Since the film is so early in the process, it does not yet have an expected release date.

Revisit our recent interview with Zauner here.

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