The Minor Feelings of a Nation

The Asian American Experience is one of shame for some, but pride for others. It is one so undervalued, that assimilation begins to resemble elimination. Every privilege is met with hardship, and every point of perceived tolerance is met with latent bigotry. To be Asian American is an idea so confused and nuanced (yet frequent) that many simply lack the vocabulary to depict it, repressing their sentiments into ‘minor feelings.’ However, it is also an identity that Cathy Park Hong, in her collection of sub-essays titled Minor Feelings, manages to capture with logical simplicity. Through her captivating personal storytelling as well as a thorough examination of cultural mannerisms, Hong presents an extraordinarily relatable explanation of her Korean-American identity, furthermore putting into print the unspoken, yet common divisions and sentiments shared among all Asian-Americans. She manages to leave the Asian-American reader with an unequivocal sense of being seen, answering questions that one never knew they asked, while also speaking to America’s societal systems as a whole.

Hong, a Korean-American professor and writer, who previously published her poetry in Dance Dance Revolution, begins examining the prospect of ‘minor feelings’ with her sub-essay “United.” Stuck in a depression which, as described by a friend, made her resemble a “sloth that had fallen from its tree,” Hong seeks out a Korean-American therapist in hopes of finding common ground. However, she is quickly dismissed by the doctor, left to question the assumed affinity she once expected among a “fellow Korean”. She is once again left dumbfounded after she is poked and prodded at by a young Vietnamese boy working in a nail-salon, relating the conflict to “two negatively charged ions bouncing off each other,” who are both rooted in a ‘hatred of themselves’ as Asians. It is with these experiences that she recognizes not only the variation of the Asian American experience, but also the incongruity that results in the division she experiences. Rather than attempt to speak ‘about’ Asians-Americans as a whole, she instead speaks nearby them, ensuring her experience doesn’t act as a blanket reality.

However, she contrasts this individualistic view with the universal injustices and “othering” which she believes all Asian Americans experience, recognizing the irony of how fabricated Asian privilege is used to invalidate her experience. On the one hand, she explains how she cringes on sight of seeing the rare Asian actor in a Hollywood film, bracing for the racist joke. Or the concept that in most of white America’s eyes, “Chinese is a synecdoche for asian as Kleenex is for tissues.” Yet, despite this ignorance, she explains that when an Asian tries to speak up, they are excluded by almost every other race, whom all-knowingly explain that because of economic statistics, “Asians are next in line to be white.”

This silencing effect and ensuing frustration, she explains, are what Hong categorizes as “Minor Feelings.” These sentiments, regardless of their affect or influence, are consistently invalidated. In “Stand Up,” she relates the idea to recognizing something that is racist, but being told “it’s all in your head,” to the point where frequent instances like these make one question their own perception. My own Korean immigrant mom and her parents believe one can “choose” to think about and experience racism, brainwashed by the idea of “next in line” white assimilation. However, Hong juxtaposes this by saying she “replaces the word white with disappear.”

Hong remains critical of white-assimilation with her fourth sub-essay, “Bad English,” examining the role of a POC writer. She describes how she once saw writing about her race as a sign of weakness, and submitting to a phenomena of writing about herself in “relation to whiteness,” rather than her goal of “de-centering whiteness.” However, she explains, with her discovery of broken English, as she used in Dance Dance Revolution, she allows herself to change the narrative from herself in relation to whites, to herself and her similarities to other people of color. Her poetry removes the ‘white’ from the topic entirely, in a country where whiteness is omnipresent. With her use of ‘broken English,’ Hong is able to write about being Asian, not as a struggle against the racism of white people, but as something of cultural beauty and identity. This standpoint is one that is surprisingly rare among Asian-American writers, including myself. I struggle to find one work of mine that contains the word Asian without the word ‘racism’ or ‘hardship,’ making Hong’s perspective ever so significant.

Hong takes her key principle of de-centering whiteness a step further, capturing every American reader with her strict yet honest critique of our country’s culture and values. In her last sub-essay, “The Indebted,” Hong asks how one can remain loyal to a country where, as in the case of Asian Americans during the Korean, Vietnam, and Second World War, they are taught they look more enemy than American. The idea of the American ideal as white is one Hong continuously focuses on, meaning achieving a certain level of “Americanism” is simply impossible for the growing number of minorities in the United States. Black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, and even indigenous Americans are all ironically excluded from the word American, as Hong describes. Her family, eventually becoming successful enough to move to an affluent white neighborhood, was never really allowed to be part of the neighborhood, with her grandmother even getting beaten by their neighbors while on a walk purely because of her accent. Yet, as she found with her writing, white consumers like “the idea of the black (or POC in general) experience,” especially when it’s easy to brand as ‘in pursuit of the American dream.’ White Americans back away from, however, those who critique the idea of the achievable dream for all, and instead celebrate stories which remain ‘distanced’ from themselves and ‘happy.’ White consumers, as a whole, are only interested in the tale of the good immigrant working for the impossible dream, but silence those who disrupt their illusion.

Perhaps in a cruel tale of coincidence, immediately following the March publication of Minor Feelings, a pandemic made famous by China made its way to the US triggering a rise in “anti-Asianness.” With every Asian grandmother assaulted indiscriminately in the street, Hong’s point of ‘not American enough’ is encapsulated, proving the grave accuracy of her claims. While East Asians are being ostracized and culturally exiled because of the bat-eater myth, no-one shows up to rescue them. As Hong argues, Americanism is “conditional” for East Asians, and effectively impossible. Hong in some ways makes this pill of oppression easy to swallow, including tales of affinity and shared-suffering, like a reaffirming hug of ‘you’re not alone,’ mixed with heartbreaking stories of injustice that calls the reader into a comfortable outrage at the ‘system.’ Yet, her ending: “we were always here,” rips the comfortable hold away, hanging the reader with a twinge of responsibility. We were always here suffering, but we were also here watching others suffer. Hong masterfully reminds us, white or POC, that we’re all guilty.