Mind the Gap
Review of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (USA: One World, 2020)
By Amber Lin
In an interview with poet Ken Chen, Cathy Park Hong quoted playwright and director Young Jean Lee about the inspiration behind Minor Feelings: what’s the worst thing she could possibly write about? Her answer was the racial dynamics of being an Asian American and the uncomfortable emotions that came with it. Despite not being from the States, I was personally challenged and enlightened by the many insights of her book, especially since moving to the United Kingdom.
Minor Feelings is equal parts a memoir, an investigation, and a lecture on the deeper nuances of discrimination faced by Asian Americans. Split into seven chapters, Hong makes use of an essayistic form to swiftly jump between the historical, the philosophical, the psychoanalytical, and the personal. In the first chapter “United,” Hong introduces the face as “the most naked part of ourselves, but we don't realize it until the face is somehow injured, and then all we think of is its naked condition,” and links this observation to American society’s emphasis on the public persona, as well as the roiling psychological effects when Asians are made either invisible or hypervisible. The misconceptions surrounding their identity originate from Asian Americans not having “enough presence to be considered real minorities,” astonishing when they constitute a substantial percentage of both the country’s lowest wage workers as well as the wealthy. Hong questions not just the existence, but the possibility, of an Asian American consciousness when high income disparities and cultural distinctions between those of South, South East, and East Asian descent are subsumed into a generic ‘Other’. She expounds on the struggles the community has in finding common ground when most Americans think “Chinese is a synecdoche for Asian the way Kleenex is for tissues,” and this view is internalized by Asians as racial self-hatred.
At the heart of this issue is the model minority myth: in the 1960s, the U.S. government primarily welcomed highly trained, educated immigrants, whose achievements enhanced the feasibility of achieving the ‘American Dream’. The exhibited meritocracy was advertised as accessible to all “as long as you are compliant and hardworking,” but disguised an entrenched racial hierarchy, still present today, by the regular absence of Asian American representation in public surveys. This lack of a relational gauge for behavior amidst cultural peers produced a veneer of secrecy and exacerbated the feeling of isolation for the Asian American.
The second chapter, “Stand Up,” heavily inspired by Richard Pryor’s stand-up performance, explores Hong’s attempts in confronting white supremacy with a straightforward virility. She exposes most ethnic literatures as conforming to a ‘single story’, a formulaic lyric that branches from a philosophy of minority oppression, which Hong describes as “I hurt, therefore I am,” and is palatable to white readers’ taste. However, this story is disconnected from the banality of a typical immigrant lifestyle—less dramatic overcoming, more daily disempowerment from structural inequity. Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of the danger of the ‘single story’ in causing critical misunderstandings and washing out the lived experiences of people of color, but ethnic writers like Hong are regularly forced to cater to a white audience in order to be published.
Hong obviously wants to change that, but years of unconsciously embodying white condescension resulted in an inability to trust her instincts and views. This level of invisibility within the Asian American mind causes unease and psychological stress, worsened when stranded in a “purgatorial status” between black/white binaries, and inhabiting the roles of both victim and perpetrator of racism. There is also a cognitive dissonance when progress is touted to have occurred even though it has not: speculations like “Asians are next in line to be White” (because the epitome of the American Dream is still marked adjacent to a rich, white male) continually make it difficult for Asian Americans to address their marginalized positions.
Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings stands out as a major influence in defining the ambiguous and non-cathartic state of Hong’s Minor Feelings. Outlined as “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic,” minor feelings manifest from daily racial experiences where expression is blocked or hindered. Hong compares it to han, the Korean national emotion, which is a mixture of shame, paranoia, rage, and melancholy, borne from years of colonialism, war, and structural repression. She finds their biggest overlap is in the shared invisibility of being “untelegenic”—suppressed, overlooked, and thus, hard to decipher—with its consequent effects on one’s mental health. This is paralleled early in the book, when Hong searches for a therapist who is Korean American like herself, a concern I shared upon discovering there were only white counsellors in my London university. The vulnerability of opening up emotionally is exponentially complicated when there is a wariness that the listener would just not get it.
Later chapters of Minor Feelings further scrutinize the psychological impacts of the slow drip feeding of racism, rather than blatant discrimination. “End of White Innocence” exhibits the erosion of dignity when immigrants are mocked for cultural misunderstandings, and the accumulated indignation when whites trumpet the persecution against their emotions. Just as Lauren Berlant’s book Cruel Optimism illustrates the effects on one’s mental health when a crisis becomes part of ordinary life, Hong demonstrates how the Asian American psyche is chipped away by perpetual elevation of white hegemony. She calls out white people’s conscious ignorance of their privilege, and rallies them to be accountable beyond sweeping, deflective statements like “I don’t see race.”
In “Bad English,” Hong identifies the mishandling of English as a major cultural marker of the Asian American experience. Her example of white tourists, unperturbed in treating natives like outsiders because of their erratic use of English, suggests that whites can never be a real minority. But in an optimistic twist, Hong regains a sense of pride by repurposing ‘bad English’ in her poetry. This chapter also provides a practical methodology of navigating racial discourse by filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha: encouraging readers to ‘speak nearby’ rather than ‘speak about’ when mentioning other cultures. It welcomes the agency of those whose culture you speak of, and removes the dangers of misrepresentation and stereotypes. What Hong promotes throughout her book is a balanced conversation with multiple and sometimes contradictory truths. Allowing for both curiosity and consideration, especially for people who do not, and cannot, fit into normative categories, ensures that discussions do not reduce one’s identity into mere talking points.
While Hong intelligently confronts white privilege and firmly holds Asians (and herself) accountable, it is her passionate wrestle with herself as an American, an Asian woman, and an artist that engaged me the most. She does this in my favorite chapters of the book, “An Education” and “Portrait of an Artist,” overhauling the tired stereotype of the hardworking, passive Asian American. In the former, the bold and ugly highlights of her university friendships with two other Asian females are brought to the forefront. In “Portrait of an Artist” she honors the life and death of poet and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Both are Asian American stories, delving into themes of identity and examining the connection with one’s community.
For the female Asian reader, “An Education” encapsulates significant aspects of our cultural lens, particularly body shaming and sexual fetishization, which are rarely shown in popular culture. Two chapters later Hong wonders if the unassuming selflessness of an Asian female is an inherent trait and whether it deserves admiration. When she summarizes her university years as a time when she and her friends “had the confidence of white men,” to me, it is not so much about being equal to the whites as it is about Asian women existing as fully fledged human beings. This train of thought began earlier in the book, as Hong insists that the kind of Asian women we need are those who are “ready to holler,” and I am still wondering if I am that kind of a woman (yet).
Hong once expressed in an interview that she wanted readers to feel her arguments, not just think about them, and this is obvious especially in “An Education.” Events are not told in chronological order, but arranged into clear thematic build-ups with emotional climaxes. The lightness in Hong’s style belies a story’s monumental significance. She shows before she tells, engaging readers with quotidian stories before unveiling the wisdom underscoring them. Inspired by Cha’s Dictee, Hong too is unapologetic in crafting her own poetics and structures in her book. As a veteran writer, editor, and professor of poetry, Hong knows how to create a literary work of prose, and many sentences left me reeling with their implications.
The final chapter, “The Indebted,” looks at the state of the Asian American diaspora today, a group influenced by world wars and rapid globalization, subject to a constant subtle surveillance by both society and oneself. Among many embodied contradictions, I felt most strongly about Hong’s citation of the phenomenon of Asians dominating capitalist industries a la the film Crazy Rich Asians as a form of “retribution for racism.” Like Hong, I hesitate to celebrate such accomplishments when the metrics and framework for success are defined by one’s proximity to whiteness. Hong asks pointedly, “who are we when we become better than them in a system that destroyed us?”
The subtitle of the book called for a “reckoning,” arousing a sense of confrontation and, ideally, resolution. Hong delivers the first part with her book, but the final leg of this process is definitely left up to the readers. The late 1960s saw Asian Americans mobilized by rampant racism, xenophobia, and the Vietnam War. In the age of COVID-19, when to be anything but White is to be radical or political, Asian Americans can—and should—unify against the racism that is out in the open, and perhaps bring their 'minor feelings' out of spectral shadows.
If I'm being perfectly honest, I hesitated to write this review given my privilege of being Singaporean Chinese. My parents were liberal in my upbringing, so I was also not subject to a repressive family dynamic, now the butt of many jokes that connect modern Asians all over the world. I have only lived in London for about 2 years, so it would be naive to assume I have any authority to speak on the minority experience. There is also a kind of cruelty in examining one's narrative in today’s world, where there is always something more important to think about: Black Lives Matter, poverty, a pandemic, economic inequalities, a genocide in China, a war in Azerbaijan. When, where, and how does one’s emotions take priority?
It is ultimately a personal endeavor when delving into identity politics, so one must accept that some questions will matter more to one than to anyone else. What Minor Feelings helps do is open up the ways we reflect on the division between race and character, as well as recognize the complex emotions and opposing opinions inhabiting the same space. Of course, there are gaps between perspectives, events, and principles, Hong’s and mine. But Hong once said that “disagreement is healthy and necessary, because it builds conversation. And that’s how the gap is filled: through discussion, through healthy and lively disagreement.” Minor Feelings is her part in filling the gap, and this review is mine.
Amber Lin was raised in Singapore and currently lives in London. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and performed at open mics. She is a graduating student at Drama Centre London.