Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner became a New York Times bestselling author with her 2021 memoir, Crying in H Mart. Now, she’s making her highly anticipated return to the nonfiction world with her new book, Thank You for Your Suffering. The upcoming memoir—out April 27, 2027, via Knopf—documents the year that Zauner lived abroad in South Korea, learning how to read and speak Korean more fluently, connecting with her late mother’s side of the family, and immersing herself in the culture. Take a peek at the book’s cover below.
In an interview with Elle, Zauner explained how the title’s origin comes from a repeatedly lost-in-translation phrase. “After getting my hair dyed, they kept saying, ‘Gosaeng haesseoyo.’ And I was like, ‘Why are they telling me, ‘Thank you for my suffering?’” she said. Instead, the phrase is meant to politely acknowledge someone’s efforts. “So much of the book is about working really hard,” said Zauner. “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.”
Before leaving for Seoul, Zauner discovered a handwritten diary by her mother in the safe-deposit box of her parents’ local bank — throwing another example onto the towering pile of reasons to better learn the language. “It felt like I spent all this time learning about Korean food and writing about that, and it just wasn’t enough,” she told Elle. “It made me suddenly really want to go further in connecting to that part of my mom’s history and who she was as a person, and so I really regretted not learning the language, and I felt quite embarrassed about it. I was really curious: If I did spend a year there, how much could I learn?”
Crying in H Mart was optioned for a film adaptation in 2023, with The White Lotus actor Will Sharpe serving as director and Zauner opening the casting call for the lead role of herself. In 2025, however, Zauner revealed that production was “on pause” after the writers and actors’ strikes, Sharpe’s decision to exit the project, and Japanese Breakfast’s rollout of For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), the band’s latest album. Zauner dappled in Hollywood headlines in other ways, though, by writing new songs for Materialists and Agatha All Along.
Read Quinn Moreland’s interview Japanese Breakfast Is Working the Pain Away.
