Michelle Zauner's best selling memoir, Crying in H Mart, was an expansion on an essay she wrote for The New Yorker in 2018. In the memoir, the author delves into her upbringing as a Korean-American, losing her mother, and reflects on the importance of food in her life and the moments she shared with her mother over meals.
MGM's Orion Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the debut book into a film of the same name back in 2021, but they've now tapped White Lotus writer, director and actor Will Sharpe to direct. Zauner's musical venture, Japanese Breakfast, will also serve as the soundtrack.
"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," Zauner said in a statement.
In her moving and raw memoir, Zauner grapples with her Korean-American identity, after assimilating into a westernised life through school, work, and relationships, she was launched back into connecting with her heritage after her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Zauner, caring for her, had to reconcile with her identity through the Korean comfort food she learnt to cook for her mother through her illness, an act of care and reconnection for them both.
"I spent another three years writing pages and pages to try and capture my mother’s brilliant character and spirit, what it was like to be raised by a Korean immigrant in a small west coast town with very little diversity, the intense shame I felt towards my mixed race identity and how my embrace of Korean food and culture helped me come to terms with that upbringing, allowed me to reconnect with her memory." Zauner wrote on Instagram when Crying in H Mart was first released.
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