Michelle Zauner, the singer-songwriter behind Japanese Breakfast, has announced a new memoir titled Thank You for Your Suffering. The book is set for release on April 27, 2027, via Knopf, and it documents the year Zauner spent living in South Korea, learning to read and speak Korean, connecting with her late mother’s side of the family, and diving deep into the culture.
The title comes from a lost-in-translation moment Zauner encountered while getting her hair dyed. “After getting my hair dyed, they kept saying, ‘Gosaeng haesseoyo,’” she explained in an interview with Elle. “And I was like, ‘Why are they telling me, ‘Thank you for my suffering?’”
It turns out the phrase is not about suffering at all. “So much of the book is about working really hard,” Zauner said. “I was just so hungry and scared of not doing a good job.” She added that the book’s arc reflects a strange psychological feeling after her mother died, of wanting to be the perfect daughter she wished she could have been when her mother was alive.
The Handwritten Diary That Changed Everything
Before Zauner left for Seoul, she found a handwritten diary by her mother in the safe-deposit box of her parents’ local bank. The discovery pushed her to dig deeper into her Korean heritage.
“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.”
Zauner was also curious about what she could achieve in a year. “If I did spend a year there, how much could I learn?” she wondered.
From Crying in H Mart to Thank You for Your Suffering
Zauner became a New York Times bestselling author with her 2021 memoir, Crying in H Mart. The new book picks up where that story left off, focusing on her time in Korea.
The journey from memoirist to novelist has not been smooth. Crying in H Mart was optioned for a film adaptation in 2023, with The White Lotus actor Will Sharpe serving as director. Zauner opened 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’s Year in Seoul
During her time in Korea, Zauner immersed herself in the culture. She learned to read and speak Korean more fluently, connected with her mother’s side of the family, and explored the country’s traditions.
The experience was intense. Zauner described a hunger and fear of failure that drove her work. She wanted to honor her mother’s memory by becoming more fully connected to her Korean identity.
| Book | Release Date | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Crying in H Mart | 2021 | Zauner’s life through Korean supermarkets |
| Thank You for Your Suffering | April 27, 2027 | Zauner’s year in South Korea |
Songs Written During the Break
While Zauner was writing the memoir, she also turned to music. She wrote new songs for Materialists and Agatha All Along, dappled in Hollywood headlines in other ways.
The songs sit alongside the book as part of a busy period. Zauner has been juggling writing, recording, and the paused film project.
What This Means for Fans
Thank You for Your Suffering arrives five years after Crying in H Mart. It follows the same pattern of Zauner using her personal experiences to explore her identity and her relationship with her Korean heritage.
The title’s origin story is itself a reminder of how translation can mislead. Zauner heard a phrase one way and understood it another, only to find out later that the meaning was entirely different.
That kind of confusion is the book’s subject. Zauner spent a year trying to understand a culture and a language she had previously approached only through food. Now she has written about it again.
The memoir is scheduled for release in 2027. For now, the cover is out, and the story of how the title came to be is a reminder that sometimes the hardest lessons come from misunderstandings.
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