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Korean food is the equivalent of her mother’s love, which is why going through the aisles of kimchi, fish paste, seaweed, etc., at H Mart brings Michelle Zauner to her knees. At age 25, she loses her 56-year-old mother Chongmi to cancer, and the grief, she writes, feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors.” The memoir captures the devastation of losing her mother—“she was both my first and second words: Umma, then, Mom. . . . Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would”—while never flinching from describing the pain they inflicted upon each other. Chongmi harshly comments on her daughter’s appearance, and her daughter broadcasts her desire for a different mother. But in the end Ms. Zauner becomes her mother’s caregiver, sleeps in the hospital room, scrupulously documents calorie counts and medications: acts of devotion that bury all memory of those early years. They lead, as well, to a quickly planned wedding to her fiancé. It’s not clear Chongmi will live to see it, but she does. In grief after her passing, her daughter writes, “She was my champion, she was my archive.”