Minor Feelings An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

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Minor Feelings An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

Author: کتی پارک هونگ (Cathy Park Hong)

A ruthlessly honest, emotionally
charged, and utterly original exploration of Asian American
consciousness and the struggle to be human

“Brilliant . . . To read this book is to become more human.”—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Time • New Statesman

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends
memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about
racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural
criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and
its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and
friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change
the way you think about our world.

Binding these essays together
is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean
immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and
melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur
when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe
the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are
not small, they’re dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to
the questions that haunt her.

With sly humor and a poet’s
searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper
examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and
devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to
shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically
honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth.

Praise for Minor Feelings

“Hong
begins her new book of essays with a bang. . . .The essays wander a
variegated terrain of memoir, criticism and polemic, oscillating between
smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt. . . . Minor Feelings is studded with moments [of] candor and dark humor shot through with glittering self-awareness.”—The New York Times

“Hong uses her own experiences as a jumping off point to examine race and emotion in the United States.”—Newsweek (40 Must-Read Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Savor This Spring)

“Powerful
. . . [Hong] brings together memoiristic personal essay and reflection,
historical accounts and modern reporting, and other works of art and
writing, in order to amplify a multitude of voices and capture Asian
America as a collection of contradictions. She does so with sharp wit
and radical transparency.

Devoured it – especially loved “An Education,” about college friendships, and “Portrait of an Artist”, a look at the horrendous killling of the great Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Cathy Park Hong is an excellent writer, and she provoked me in the best way – I thought, I adjusted, I saw the world differently Adam Dalva                                                                                           rated it: 5.0 from 5.0 

No words I put here today can express how amazing this book is. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong is just flipping BRILLIANT, yes, in all caps! As a minority working in corporate America, I felt like Asians were the “preferred minority”, Hong mentions this and what she says about the topic was like a light bulb turn on. Reading about Asian Americans suffrage of racism and discrimination, blew my mind and I was taken back on how much some of their pain reflects on those of Black Americans. Seriously, I just don’t know how else to describe what Hong has shared in her book. The clarity and understand that “It’s not just us” is mind blowing. There are tons of own voice reviews out there and I highly recommend you check them out. Read this book! Thank you, Random House/ One World for gifting me an ARC, in exchange for an honest review. Never Without a Book                                                                             rated it: 5.0 from 5.0 

Just terrific! The kind of book that I could tell I loved just ten pages in. A stellar example of how to write a book of essays: each balances history, personal memory, and cultural commentary. This was everything I wanted from The Souls of Yellow Folk by Wesley Yang but didn’t get. I found her essay on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha especially moving (cw for SA). Obviously I was tickled by her scathing review of Oberlin campus culture. Esther Espeland                                                                                      rated it: 5.0 from 5.0