Minor Feelings

As someone of mixed heritage interested in how race, culture, and history intersect differently for different groups of people, I was immediately hooked by Cathy Park Hong’s book. Her examination of the Korean-American experience and all of the privileges and disadvantages of her race and position in society resonated hugely with me. 

But, almost more importantly, I found her essays thought-provoking, funny and wide-ranging. Stand-up comedy? Check. The 1992 LA riots? Check. The Beatles? Check. I’ve reread it multiple times and have recommended it to everyone I know.

In this book, Park Hong unflinchingly excavates the silencing of marginalized people in American literature and culture at large, and articulates how one whose stories have been muted might find a way to speak and make themselves heard. By shining light—and not just any light, but a brilliantly sharp analytical beam—on people whose experiences and stories have been systemically dismissed or silenced, Park Hong offers expansive possibilities for our own lives, both private and public, and the political implications therein.

This book is itchy. It makes you scratch at thoughts, intuitions, and feelings you may have not resolved for yourself but always knew were there.

Cathy Park Hong explores Asian Americanness in the most micro and ‘minor’ of ways, and in turn creates an entirely macro and major experience. It’s a deeply funny, sobering, and vulnerable read.