Structure

The memoir consists of 20 chapters and it is structured around the central story of author Michelle Zauner's mother's illness and death in 2014 when Zauner was 25 years old. The opening chapter, which shares its title with the book, was printed as a personal essay in the New Yorker in 2018. This chapter takes place sometime after Chongmi's death and Zauner writes about coming to grips with the finality of her death as she peruses the shelves of an Asian grocery store and contemplates her identity as a Korean woman. From there, she recounts her experiences as she learns her mother is ill with stage IV squamous-cell carcinoma and returns home to Eugene Oregon to help care for her. This is followed by a heartrending account of her mother's continual decline after two failed rounds of chemotherapy and then her death, which occurs in Chapter 13.

The earlier chapters of the...