Minor Feelings
I first started reading Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings because the words below the bolded orange title intrigued me: “An Asian American Reckoning.” I’m not sure I was prepared for how accurate this subtitle was. With careful and often uncomfortable detail, Hong explores the feelings many Asian Americans have, using some of her own experiences as examples. Hong writes that minor feelings are “built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.” Although Hong acknowledges that minor feelings are present in any marginalized group, she focuses primarily on minor feelings in the context of Asian Americans. Towards the beginning of the book, Hong describes an encounter she once had with a man that claimed that Asians were “‘next in line to be white.’” With thoughtful and thought provoking analysis, Hong helps her reader understand how this mentality gives rise to minor feelings. ...
