A Nice Pair: Japanese Breakfast

For today’s A Nice Pair, we’re matching up Crying in H Mart by Michelle Michelle Zauner with Japanese Breakfast’s latest album Jubilee.

It generally takes around a year for paperbacks to come out after a book’s hardcover release, but sales of this book were doing so well that it took two years. But the long-awaited paperback is now in stock at last! Crying in H Mart is a memoir in which Michelle Zauner shares her stories of family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. The title refers to her weekly trips to her favourite Asian store where she found solace while contending with the loss of her mother to terminal cancer.

We recommend pairing the book with Japanese Breakfast’s third studio album, Jubilee. Michelle is the lead singer of Japanese Breakfast and this album was released just weeks after her memoir. As she told Pitchfork in March 2021, “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy,” This album was nominated last year for a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.