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A review by thereadhersrecap
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
4.0
zamn, what a collection!
Cathy Park Hong puts into words the Asain American consciousness in this part memoir part culture criticism essay collection. Each essay, accompanied by personal accounts, embarks on an examination of the racial experience in America.
The book centers around the term “minor feelings” which Hong defines as an everyday experience of being nonchalantly confronted with racial remarks and having your perceptions of that experience questioned or dismissed. It stems from a lack of change for the purpose of keeping an individual in place.
“The problem is not that my childhood was exceptionally traumatic but that it was in fact rather typical.”
This book helped me to reflect on my own experiences and feelings being a Hispanic Pacific Islander and I found a lot of what Hong described resonated with me. As she stated, this collection does not encompass the entirety of the Asian American experience but it is a jumping-off point to further discussion on racial inequality in America.
Honestly, everyone should read this book!
Memorable quotes from the book:
“For as long as I could remember, I have struggled to prove myself into existence.”
”Racial hatred is seeing yourself the way the Whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy.”
“Writers of color have to behave better in their poetry and in person; they had to always act gracious and grateful so that white people would be comfortable enough to sympathize with their racialized experiences.”
“Will there be a future where I, on the page, am simply I, on the page, and not I, proxy for a whole ethnicity, imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain?”
“Writing about race is a polemic, in that we must confront the white capitalist infrastructure that has erased us, but also a lyric, in that our inner consciousness is knotted with contraindications. As much as I protest against the easy narrative of overcoming, I have to believe we will overcome racial inequities; as much as I’m exasperated by sentimental immigrant stories of suffering, I think Koreans are some of the most traumatized people I know.”
“In our efforts to belong in American, we act grateful, as if we’ve been given a second chance at life. But our shared root is not the opportunity this nation has given us but how the capitalist accumulation of white supremacy has enriched itself off the blood of our countries. We cannot forget this.”
“Our respective racial containment isolates us from each other, enforcing our thoughts that our struggles are too specialized, unrelatable to anyone else except others in our group, which is why making myself, and by proxy other Asain Americans, more human is not enough for me. I want to destroy the universal.”
Cathy Park Hong puts into words the Asain American consciousness in this part memoir part culture criticism essay collection. Each essay, accompanied by personal accounts, embarks on an examination of the racial experience in America.
The book centers around the term “minor feelings” which Hong defines as an everyday experience of being nonchalantly confronted with racial remarks and having your perceptions of that experience questioned or dismissed. It stems from a lack of change for the purpose of keeping an individual in place.
“The problem is not that my childhood was exceptionally traumatic but that it was in fact rather typical.”
This book helped me to reflect on my own experiences and feelings being a Hispanic Pacific Islander and I found a lot of what Hong described resonated with me. As she stated, this collection does not encompass the entirety of the Asian American experience but it is a jumping-off point to further discussion on racial inequality in America.
Honestly, everyone should read this book!
Memorable quotes from the book:
“For as long as I could remember, I have struggled to prove myself into existence.”
”Racial hatred is seeing yourself the way the Whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy.”
“Writers of color have to behave better in their poetry and in person; they had to always act gracious and grateful so that white people would be comfortable enough to sympathize with their racialized experiences.”
“Will there be a future where I, on the page, am simply I, on the page, and not I, proxy for a whole ethnicity, imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain?”
“Writing about race is a polemic, in that we must confront the white capitalist infrastructure that has erased us, but also a lyric, in that our inner consciousness is knotted with contraindications. As much as I protest against the easy narrative of overcoming, I have to believe we will overcome racial inequities; as much as I’m exasperated by sentimental immigrant stories of suffering, I think Koreans are some of the most traumatized people I know.”
“In our efforts to belong in American, we act grateful, as if we’ve been given a second chance at life. But our shared root is not the opportunity this nation has given us but how the capitalist accumulation of white supremacy has enriched itself off the blood of our countries. We cannot forget this.”
“Our respective racial containment isolates us from each other, enforcing our thoughts that our struggles are too specialized, unrelatable to anyone else except others in our group, which is why making myself, and by proxy other Asain Americans, more human is not enough for me. I want to destroy the universal.”