WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS

MICHELLE ZAUNER IS CONTEMPLATING the idea of boundaries. “A part of me is like, did I go too far?” she says, half-sighing, half-laughing. “But I think I naturally make intensely personal art. Often the most shameful admissions are the ones that stick with you.”

The frontwoman of beloved indie band Japanese Breakfast is no stranger to intimacy in her writing. But it’s the success of her recent memoir, the New York Times best-selling Crying in H Mart, that has inspired today’s exercise in self-evaluation. The 32-year-old’s lyrics have always been intimately personal – throughout Japanese Breakfast’s three albums, Michelle has explored the grief she felt following her mother’s death from cancer in 2014 – but in the book she truly bares her soul.

In its, a phrase that roughly translates to, ‘One arm full of groceries’), asking whether her Korean identity has died with her mother. “” she asks. It’s a question that sets the tone for the rest of the memoir, in which she chronicles her mother’s illness, their turbulent relationship, and her own bereavement.