Zauner, of indie band Japanese Breakfast, presents a memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity. She tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's 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 over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. Her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer when Michelle was twenty-five forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
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