Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong (One World, 2020)
★★★★★
I started listening to this audiobook on May 28, as thousands across the country were marching in protest against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black lives. I soon felt deeply grateful to be reading work by another person of color that both spoke directly and incisively about white supremacist capitalism and called for Asian Americans to reckon with anti-Blackness in their communities. I also felt incensed at the experiences Hong describes, drawing from her own life and others’ (like David Dao Duy Anh, the Vietnamese American passenger on United Flight 3411 who was brutalized at the hands of aviation security officers), of anti-Asian-American racism, internalized shame/humiliation, and collective trauma. Coupled with everything else going on in the world, I could rarely listen to Minor Feelings for more than an hour at a time.
Still, I was moved by Hong’s scathingly honest assessments of herself, as well as her often profound observations and commentary. What most sticks with me is an anecdote she shares about (finally, for once in her life) standing up to a man who makes a racist remark to her on the subway:
I wended my way past everyone in the crowded car until I stood over him. I quietly told him off. I not only called him a racist but I also hissed that he was setting a horrible example for his baby. When I returned to my friends, my head throbbing, I looked back and saw that he had stood up and was walking toward us. As he approached us, he pointed to my roommate’s boyfriend and threatened, “He’s lucky that he’s not your boyfriend, because if he was your boyfriend, I’d beat the shit out of him.” Then he walked back and sat down. I was stunned and relieved that it didn’t end in violence or more racial slurs. My roommate’s boyfriend kept saying, “I wish I said something.” Then it was our stop. As we were getting off, the guy shouted at me across the crowded car, “Fucking chink!”
“White trash motherfucker!” I yelled back.
When we were on the platform, my friend, who had failed to say much during the train ride, burst into tears.
“That’s never happened to me before,” she wailed.
And just like that, I was shoved aside. I was about to comfort her and then I stopped myself from the absurdity of that impulse. All of my anger and hurt transferred to her, and even now, as I’m writing this, I’m more upset with her than that guy. We walked silently back to our apartment while she cried.
In that single story I recognize every impulse I’ve ever had to make my feelings “comfortable” for a white person, and I recognize, too, the absurdity of it.
This is the sort of collection that I want to buy, re-read, and highlight passages in. For that reason, I don’t necessarily recommend the audiobook; plus, while I enjoyed hearing Hong read her own work and the poetic cadences she brought to many of her own lines, some of her diction choices jarred me. But I grant Hong would argue that, as in her poetry, “To other English is to make audible the imperial power sewn into the language, to slit English open so its dark histories slide out.”
I can’t remember where I saw it, but an idea that’s stuck with me lately is that white-supremacist-capitalist education won’t give you the tools to dismantle it. (Some Twitter user speaking after Lorde, maybe?) I’ve completed a liberal-arts university education in the United States, but it’s on me—and anyone else like me—to seek out writers like Hong, Lorde, and other activists of marginalized identities to continue educating ourselves about how to dismantle systems of oppression. I’ve been especially grateful for the resources compiled by “BK” on Medium and Kearny Street Workshop, targeted as they are toward East Asians like myself with an eye to how we can meaningfully show up in solidarity with and for the Black community.