Five years after Crying in H Mart spent months on global bestseller lists, Michelle Zauner has completed her return to prose. Knopf will publish the singer-songwriter’s second memoir, Thank You for Your Suffering, on 27 April 2027.
The title draws directly from the everyday Korean courtesy phrase gosaeng haesseoyo. While commonly spoken to acknowledge someone’s hard work, its literal English translation means “you suffered.” Zauner encountered the expression inside a Seoul hair salon while getting her hair dyed, before adopting it as the organising theme for her year-long immersion abroad.
Spanning 224 pages, the book chronicles the twelve months Zauner spent living in South Korea with her husband and bandmate, Peter Bradley. The couple navigated a cramped apartment while Zauner enrolled in an intensive, tears-inducing language academy in central Seoul.
Reading a Mother’s Secret Diary
The decision to move to South Korea grew out of a long-standing desire to deepen her maternal connection through language. Before boarding her flight, Zauner opened a family safe-deposit box at a local bank in the United States, discovering a handwritten Korean diary left behind by her mother from her youth.
Mastering the language offered the only direct route to reading those private pages.
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“It felt like I spent all this time learning about Korean food and writing about that, and it was not enough,” Zauner explained during a telephone interview with 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?”
While Crying in H Mart documented the raw grief following her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, the new text explores recovery and renewal.
“Especially having written my first book about something so raw and painful, it was really nice to write a book that had so much joy in it, and it was so funny to recall such a special time,” Zauner noted.
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A Journey Beyond Mother and Daughter
Her extended family in Seoul provided unexpected glimpses into her mother’s early personality. Her maternal aunt recalled childhood mischief that contrasted sharply with the elegant, stoic figure Zauner remembered from her upbringing in Eugene, Oregon.
The memoir also follows her excursions through Seoul’s underground music community, performances delivered in Korean, and unfamiliar local cosmetic procedures.
The announcement comes as Zauner prepares for parenthood, expecting her first child ahead of the publication campaign. Reflecting on the transition, Zauner described feeling grounded by her own upbringing.
“I know that I am going to do a good job because I feel like I was mothered very beautifully,” she said.
Zauner views the book as an encouragement for readers stepping into unfamiliar disciplines late in adulthood. “It is for anyone who feels like it is too late to start something new or that they have gone too far down one path to explore another,” she stated.
