Crying in Glatt Mart
If you Understand Every Reference in the Title, I Owe You a Coffee
If I think that you’re cool and it’s your birthday or a holiday, there’s a 95% chance that I will gift you a book. There’s also an additional 97.5% chance that I will gift you either Joan Didion or Marina Keegan.
The reasons for those two authors in particular are numerous. But since I care about your time, I’ll only give you two. Firstly, I think that most everyone should have more women writers on their shelves (since the canon is often . . . shall we say. . . exclusive). Secondly, They explore all the topics that I’m fascinated by, so when I give these books, I often feel like I’m giving my “gift-ee” a part of me. It’s me being earnest without being too intense about it.
When I choose Joan Didion, I give someone a copy of “Where I Was From”-- her 2003 collection of essays. I think it’s underrated. It’s half and half on memoir and reporting about California and her relationship with the state. It’s stellar and dreamy and damning and quintessential Didion. I read it for the first time in late March and early April. Unfortunately, due to her life being cut far too short, Marina Keegan has only one collection of short stories and essays titled “The Opposite of Loneliness” and it inspired a lot of my final column for the Daily Trojan. But the essays are full of a joie de vivre and the stories have so much maturity that it’s difficult for me to believe that she was only my age when she wrote them.
When I gift these books, I commit a little bit of a literary sacrilege. I write a little paragraph on the title page to the recipient and then flip through the pages and annotate. I pepper in parentheses and write exclamation points and stars in the margins where I think my “gift-ee” will appreciate the words. It’s also me being self-serving and saying “look! look! this is what I think is important and what you should appreciate (or at least I hope so).” I’m thinking about the person I’m giving it to. Are they more Marina or more Joan? What do I want them to think about when they read this?
I chose the title of this piece because I was thinking about the books that I read this year. Particularly the (somewhat) aforementioned “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner. It was an emotion-filled memoir by a literal rock star and I left a rating-less review on it because it felt weird to “rate” someone’s grief. It was primarily about her relationship with her mom and I listened to the audiobook in basically one day. (Granted I took a pretty long walk that I had taken that day, but honestly, it was! such! a! jaw! dropping! memoir! It made me think about the relationships we have with our culture. But I was also really thinking about how much can change in a year.
Recently, I was talking with a friend and we were just talking about how different everything felt post-grad. The way that we felt that our super weird university years changed us.
“Let’s just pretend I didn’t exist before USC,” she said when we reflected on who we were in those pre-college years.
I nodded a bit in agreement because it’s easy to say that because we probably didn’t like how we did our hair or dressed, or the way our political and cultural views were at the time of matriculation. But I think that with the way that I have always had two new years, there’s a certain element of multiple opportunities to change for the better. (Though, because of the way the school year is structured, I have always thought of the Jewish New Year as the real new year. There’s more community with the exchanges of “shana tovah!” and “g’mar chatimah tovah!” and I always start it off in my nicest dress and heels. Whereas the calendar new year begins with a certain chill both from the hungover barista giving you the coffee and the general weather.
This Rosh Hashanah, I went to two different services. One at the congregation that I have gone to since I was a child and the other that I am attending for the first time as an adult.
In the first address to the congregation, the Rabbi urged us to find holiness in the day-to-day. I interpreted it— though he may not have intended it this way whoops!— as a plea to actually implement a casual Hebrew phrase that I have heard used all the time in my Hebrew. סימו לב or “simu lev” is meant to mean something like “pay attention” but more literally translates to “put your heart into it.” I always thought it was far more elegant than the harsher-sounding English version. It encourages a more meaningful approach to work or duty.
In the address to the other congregation, the Rabbi asked that we commit ourselves to curiosity this year or actually listen to someone with an opposing view. We might learn something new–even if we disagree. A sort of welcoming the stranger. If we listen to someone, it’s a little more תיקון עולם or that Jewish value of repairing the world: Tikkun Olam. We are one step closer to understanding.
These are two different congregations with two very different audiences. But I think despite the literal differences in the text, they really have the same message. It’s really just about listening. Which is really what you’re doing when you’re reading a memoir. You’re listening to someone’s story. In the last year, I’ve read Joel Grey (from LA), Sutton Foster, Rebecca Woolf, Georgia Pritchett, Mary Laura Philpott (I gifted Bomb Shelter to my mom for mother’s day), Dolly Alderton (I wrote about Everything I Know About Love last time!), and of course, Joan Didion. In other words, I’ve done a lot of listening. It’s also just me being nosy. I love knowing more about people. I want to know the secrets (or at least the ones that they’re giving to the general public).
And, it’s because of that, that I give people Joan Didion and Marina Keegan. It’s not because I want people to read my annotations. In fact, it’s really the opposite. I talk enough for everyone else in the room. But, it’s because of סימו לב. I want people to “put their heart into it.” That’s what reading a memoir is. It’s listening. It’s that commitment to curiosity and it’s changing and it’s “I didn’t exist before USC.” It’s about learning and growing and crying in H Mart and Glatt Mart.
I gifted someone a copy of “Where I Was From” recently. I flipped through the book.
“See? See?” I said as the light in my Honda cast itself onto the pages. “I think you’ll love it. This is my favorite part. I really want you to pay attention here.”
So, I guess my challenge for the new year to you? Gift more memoirs and סימו לב. Put your heart into it.