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Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

by Cathy Park Hong

One World ·2020 ·209 pages ·Essays
Top of the Pile
Top of the Pile
I Index
75/99
Near the Top

66/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

84/99

Readers

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Scholars

38/99

Rating

95/99

Volume

73/99

Rating

95/99

Volume

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About This Book

Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose the truth of racialized consciousness in America. 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. Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship in a search to both uncover and speak the truth.


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Reviews

"[Hong's] tone can sound petulant and aggrieved, sly and comic, sometimes all at once ..."

Jennifer Szalai· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Title aside, nothing is minor about Hong's taut, sharp collection."

Terry Hong· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Some lines in Minor Feelings flow just as a lyric would while others rail against the English language and reject literary forms long cemented within canonical texts."

Grace Ebert· The Chicago Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Hong's metaphors are crafted with stinging care."

Jia Tolentino· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Near the Top

"offers a fierce excavation of her experience as an Asian American woman living and working as a poet and artist."

Sarojini Seupersad· BookPage Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Minor Feelings begins with intraracial antagonism, but it ends by trying to envision something closer to a form of intraracial solidarity."

Jane Hu· The Nation Read review ↗ Near the Top

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