PHILADELPHIA — "Crying in H Mart," the first book by Michelle Zauner of Philly-born band Japanese Breakfast, was a memoir published in 2021 that mourned the death of her mother, Chongmi, and explored her own Korean identity through food. It was a runaway bestseller.

The book, whose titular Asian grocery store is in Elkins Park, turned the indie songwriter and bandleader into a literary sensation. It spent 67 weeks on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list and 43 more on the paperback list.

Now, Zauner has announced a second memoir, "Thank You for Your Suffering," which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in April.

The book chronicles the year that Zauner — who was born in Eugene, Oregon, and graduated from Bryn Mawr College, before starting her Philly bands Little Big League and Japanese Breakfast — spent living in South Korea, learning the language, and connecting more deeply with her mother’s family.

As she explained it in an interview in Elle, the book’s title comes from a phrase she initially heard in a hair salon in Seoul. Gosaeng haesseoyo is a colloquial expression that Koreans use to mean “good job” but literally translates to English as “you suffered.”

“So much of the book is about working really hard,” Zauner told Elle. “I was just so hungry and scared of not doing a good job. I think part of that was this strange psychological feeling after my mom died, of wanting to be this perfect daughter that I wish I could have been when she was alive.”

Zauner’s most recent Japanese Breakfast album, "For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)" came out in 2025.

This July, she and the band, including husband Peter Bradley, played the Highmark Mann opening for Death Cab for Cutie. She was well into a pregnancy she announced in June and due to give birth in the coming weeks.

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