minor feelings is a reflective, nuanced read that delves into the complex intricacies of asian american identity. how do u explore sth often treated as invisible, neither here nor there, w/ a public existence as wispy as smoke? it's an arduous task but hong captures many things adeptly in her memoir cum history and cultural criticism work.

i don't read many non-fiction books, but i'm so glad i picked this one up. while i was vaguely aware of the troubles asian-americans had to face, cathy brought so many details and often overlooked experiences to the forefront in such a way that one can't ignore it. will be re-reading and looking for other books by her.

“Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.” 

➽ This is a nonfiction about the Asian American identity! I was interested to learn more about the topic and in Minor Feelings the author offers a collection of essays filled with personal anecdotes. I liked the discussions about the model minority myth, the intersection between race/art and assimilation into American culture. While I liked hearing what Cathy Park had to say, I wish her essays had a bigger connection and that the book felt more cohesive. Some chapters were simply more intriguing to me than others. I struggled the most with the chapters that were focused on her personal life, as it felt a bit invasive and detracted from the points she wanted to make. At one point she talked in-depth about a complicated friendship and her friend's mental health issues. That didn't feel like it had a place in this book and I wonder if her friends consented to having very personal things shared for everyone to read about. The balance between personal anecdotes and her political discussions just felt a bit off at times and made this awkward to read. 

I chose Minor Feelings as my choice nonfiction book for school, and I am incredibly glad I did. This essay collection mixes memoir, history, anthology, and more into a genre bending work of art about the Asian American experience and the pressure of assimilation. I cannot recommend this book enough!
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The Portrait of an Artist and An Education were my two favorite essays, but every component of this collection brought a unique angle and style, which I appreciated.

Hong is an amazing writer, you are taken into the worlds she creates in her essays fully. With dark and powerful themes this book leaves you ready to listen and listen until either you can’t anymore because you have to do something else or because it has ended. Hong’s writing, above all, is brutally honest. It’s clear that unless she had to (due to the wishes of friends) she was completely and utterly truthful. It is now one of my favorite autobiographical works. Yet, I wish we knew more about certain individuals, and stories.

I wanted to know more about her friend from college, her family, and her immediate post-grad experience, but I also recognize I’m being greedy. When you read something this good, that tends to happen.

I think that this is a difficult book for me to rate because of the fact that it is split into 7 different essays, some of which work in relation to others and some which stand completely alone. The first three essays, which spoke directly in regards to the title Minor Feelings, were extremely eye-opening and affirming to my past experiences with racism and sexism. I was able to, while reading those initial sections, come to the conclusion that the majority of my own racial experiences have been "minor feelings", meaning that they have been subtle and distorted by my own self-hating memory. I have not been pulled over or directly called the n-word, but I have had more indirect experiences that have made me, in retrospect, wonder if maybe I was overreacting the entire time. Similarly, my voicing of such events has been met with sharp dismissals that only further my personal disbelief. The following three essays for me were, to put it bluntly, unremarkable. As stand-alones, perhaps in a separate collection of essays or as their own works entirely, I would've found them to be exceptionally well-done. I was personally not able to make clear connections between these essays and the overall theme of the book and its title. Perhaps if they had been fitted in between the initial three essays, I would've been more appreciative of their content, but because I was so astonished initially, the second half of the book was rather underwhelming to me. The essay entitled "An Education", particularly, seemed out-of-place with the other essays, while "The Portrait of an Artist" was more connected to the idea of "Minor Feelings". Cathy Park Hong is, without a doubt, an incredible writer whose works I will eagerly indulge in in the future, but only half of these essays left me in utter shock at their precision and beauty. I have found this to be the case with another essay collection that I have read, and so it is hard to give a definite rating for a book that has ignited me just as much as it has left me unsatisfied. 

I liked Minor Feelings but I didn’t love it. Some essays really struck me, especially Hong’s discussions of racism, pop culture—loved her dismantling of Moonrise Kingdom—being Asian America and Korean, and how she confronts race head on, but others I struggled with—notably the essay about art school and her two college friends had some excellent parts but overall didn’t work for me.

Her writing is bold, judgmental and brutally honest. I admired her consistent interrogation of her own thoughts and motives as she ruthlessly questioned those of others. I definitely think it’s worth a read but it’s not a new favorite.