As the mother of two half-Asian children I leaped at the chance to read this book (thank you NetGalley). The first essay was so phenomenal that I immediately told my daughter she needed to read it as well. I found myself doing what I don't normally do; highlighting passages to go back to and consider.
There is so much in this book about being seen, unseen, mistakenly seen and being seen as a type. It's a lot to absorb but I can't imagine a reader not getting something from this book regardless of the reader's own race. Highly recommended!

No words I put here today can express how amazing this book is, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong is BRILLIANT, yes in all caps! As a minority working in corporate America, I felt like Asians were the “preferred minority” but when I read about their suffrage of racism and discrimination, I was just taken back on how much of their pain reflects on those of Black Americans. Seriously I just don’t know how else to describe what Hong has shared in her book. The clarity and understand that “It’s not just us” is mind blowing. There are tons of own voice reviews out there and I highly recommend you check them out.

Thank you, Random House/ One World for gifting me this DARC via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Overall this was a 5/5 star read.

Intense and utterly unflinching, Park Hong's essay collection will surely launch a thousand necessary conversations about the Asian American experience and modern racial tensions the community at large reckons with on a daily basis. It is more crucial now than ever to have diverse voices that are as honest and thought-provoking as Park Hong's, whose undeniable eloquence is just the cherry on top.

Interesting and enlightening. I read these essays over a period of days- one at a time- to savor them. They're thought provoking, especially if your life experience (like mine) is different from hers on multiple levels. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Well written with references that span art and poetry.

"Minor feelings: the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one's perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed."

Essays exploring Asian American identity that blend memoir, cultural criticism, and history:
- United: On the purgatorial status of Asian Americans and the need to prove the self into existence, as explored in the case of David Dao, who was dragged off a United Airlines plane.
- Stand Up: On exploring stand-up comedy to break from the requirement of writing to pander to white audiences (at least if you want it to reach mainstream), as evident in the popular narrative surrounding the 1992 LA Riots.
- The End of White Innocence: On the privilege of innocence, and the importance of confronting and being held accountable for the reality of history.
- Bad English: Bad English as a tool to other English; Bad English as a tool to expose the reality of how racial groups have overlapped in history; Bad English as a part of heritage.
- An Education: On female friendships in college and coming-of-age as an artist/poet.
- Portrait of an Artist: On Asian female invisibility, and the lack of coverage around the rape and murder of artist and poet Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
- Indebted: On the conditional existence of Asian American consciousness; on activist Yuri Kochiyama.

My favourite essays were the first three. In the last few years, given the hot topics of diversity, race, and identity of this cultural and political climate, I've been confounded by the purgatorial status of Asian Americans, so the first essay especially resonated with me. It's the conversation I've been searching for, through pages and pages of black and white.

This is such an important topic and there's so much to unpack. At some points, perhaps too much. At some points, I lost track of the focus of an essay. The first three I found most compelling for their clearer arguments; the rest took me a bit of time to process upon finishing, piecing together the arguments in retrospect; "An Education" was the essay I had the most trouble figuring out the main argument of and how it fit in with this collection (and haven't quite figured it out, but I'm looking forward to conversations with others--and more reviews once the collection is out to the world--to help me with it).

I'm so thankful for books like these that spark conversation, that fill a void in cultural discourse, that remind me that I have a stake, that prove my existence. There is so much more to go.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book. I always enjoy finding a new author and when they write essays that is an easy way to get to know a new author. Seeing a book about Asian Americans was a plus to me because I feel like there are not that many out there. Definitely recommend.

What a phenomenal collection! I devoured this book pretty quickly and couldn't get enough of Cathy's thoughts and observations. Her ability to navigate the idea of being an Asian American while also staying firmly rooted in her own experience, as a Korean American, is impressive and she provides such a necessary voice. It takes a gifted writer and storyteller to make you care about their thoughts and Cathy nailed it with this collection.

This breathtaking blend of memoir, cultural critique, and history lesson looks at the lived experiences of Asian Americans. Poet Cathy Park Hong calls out white centrism as the fun house mirror it is, and how it can warp views of the self and others. I was completed enraptured from the first page by the winding prose and emotional intensity. I feel like I highlighted at least half of the text! This is something I will absolutely return to again.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is described as a collection of essays, which I don’t normally read, but I’m trying to push myself to read new genres and authors this year, especially books written by women of color.

However, this book is so much more than a collection of essays. This book weaves together personal narrative, biographical narrative, and history. It illuminates so poignantly the racism that Cathy Park Hong has experienced and explores beautifully the tension she has internalized through all of her loved experiences.

I was fascinated, humbled, saddened, and angered as I read about many of her experiences, and it fueled my commitment to continue my ongoing work and learning as I strive to be an ally.

Wow. This book is so important, and I know even though it is January that it will be a highlight of 2020. Cathy Park Hong, through a series of modular essays, so thought-provokingly and articulately writes about her experience as an Asian-American. Her essays have an academic quality to them, but remain easily accessible (my favorite type of writing). What is most notable is how the writer masters the concept of "perspective" - speaking to her personal experiences without making blanket statements for an entire underrepresented group.

As I finish this book, I force myself to sit in silence, letting Park Hong's words sink in deep. Her words are powerful, beautiful, poetic and prosaic, simple and effective. This slim work of "modular essays" packs a punch that will resonate with you whether you are Asian American or not. She writes about the Asian American consciousness and history in the United States, how we are neither black nor white, how we are simultaneously a model minority and the "carpenter ants of the service industry," how we have a deep history in the United States depending on what kind of Asian American you are, how we are both below and above racial profiling, discrimination, harassment. She tells the history of her parents and her life growing up in LA's Koreatown, but she also reckons with the whole idea of identity politics, that writers of color are only destined to write about race and their stories of discrimination.

I'm filing this book under ones where, if I were the type to highlight my paperback copies, would cover entire pages in yellow markings. I want to copy and paste some of them here, but then my review would be as long as one of her essays. Park Hong's writing is all at once beautiful, academic, filled with activism and personal life stories. I would recommend this to intermediate students of social justice, who are okay with historiographies, battling contradictions of identity and philosophy, leaving deep, powerful questions unanswered.

Thank you to One World for the ARC - this is one of those books that I will buy to read and re-read, letting the author's stories of herself, history, family, and violence sink in even deeper. This is a collection that deserves to be read fast and slow.

On the whole, I appreciated this work. Hong is disarmingly self-aware, and she's a gorgeous, touching, sometimes bracing writer of prose (I love her poetry!). She tries to be honest and reminds us of this every step of the way. These moments felt more genuine and revealing to me, and they come later in the collection. On the flip side, the moments that I found a bit astringent were when Hong made a conscious step onto a soap box (“I suppose, then, a history lesson is called for"). These came in the earlier essays and, to my mind, seemed more...rote? It had the feel of re-inventing the wheel, although, again, I can appreciate the candor if not necessarily the content.

My favorite essays were the one on her college friendships (a way to talk about female friendships as aesthetically generative) and the one on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s rape and murder (which, as she rightly notes, often gets shoved under the carpet). The friendship one was lovely just because it was so messy and quirky. Given the other themes in the collection, I especially liked the point that friendship creates confidence—even outrageous confidence—in the face of (Asian) insecurity. I must confess I didn’t expect to like the Cha essay. I totally take Hong's point about Asian women under-reporting sexual assault. And it really is stunning that such a vile and violent rape/murder didn’t get ANY coverage at the time. The Cha essay is most intriguing in that it frames/motivates the entire collection: to write in prose instead of poetry, Hong-the-poet suggests, is to offer a less “haunted” version of race, one that addresses it forthrightly. For this alone, I admire Hong, although I still hold the belief that sometimes addressing race (a slippery topic) through slant rather than direct ways can actually be more revealing.

Wow, an excellent book an an Asian American experience that doesn’t simply rehash and reexamine old stereotypes and issues. Cathy Park Hong gives us an honest examination of many of the issues Asian Americans contend with in 2019, tracing the roots of those issues back to imperialism and colonization.

Her essays on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and on her friendships with other Asian American women added new dimensions to the idea of Asian American womanhood, and it was really refreshing to see something other than a reexamination of the Dragon Lady and submissive woman stereotypes.

This book doesn’t necessarily arrive at a thesis, but weaves together many threads that make up the Asian American condition. I don’t think she ever claims to speak from a place of authority — this book is not about THE Asian American experience, but a single experience that has been influenced by others, and it results in something that might feel familiar to all of us. It was a much-needed step in a new direction in the examination of the Asian American identity.

I don't normally read non-fiction, but when I saw the title of this book, I knew I had to check it out. Minor Feelings is a thought provoking series of essays tackling elements of the Asian American experience. I'm not actually sure where to start this review. Minor Feelings had passages that made me pause. As a Chinese American there were similarities and differences to my experiences and Hong's. Not only did Minor Feelings make me examine some of my own memories, but see Hong's perspective. As an adoptee, I am recommending this to my fellow family members because of the way Hong is able to succinctly phrase things that have been swirling around my own mind. These essays are easy to digest while also having an academic edge to them.

When I heard about this book and received an Advanced Readers' Copy, I was drawn to the title and the author. I read it in a span of a week, because I wanted to thoroughly absorb, understand and really read Cathy Park Hong's words in this collection of incredibly powerful and raw essays that spoke to me as an Asian American woman. I felt that for once, someone put into words what I have felt all along but I never really had to courage to speak out loud or acknowledge, and Hong explains why beautifully in this book.

Some of the things that struck me in her book is Hong's mention of the "new racial awareness mediator" when you have to explain your race to someone, and that "Most Americans know nothing about Asian Americans. They think Chinese is synecdoche for Asians that was Kleenex is for tissues". I definitely related to this when I am constantly explaining myself and my heritage to someone.

The essays come well researched as well and love learning about the history of our country's Manifest Destiny where Hong mentions about how three Chinese laborers died for every two miles of track for the transcontinental railroad, and at the completion of the railroad, not one photo was taken of a Chinese man in the celebratory photos.

Hong explores these minor feelings which she describes are the range of emotions mostly negative from everyday feelings of being slighted with racial undertones that others may conjure your own feelings as though made up or being overly sensitive.

Hong's mention of the 1992 LA Riots really resonated with me as I personally experienced this first hand being a witness to how my parents and our entire family were so affected by this incident - and having to come back to our business after looters have destroyed the restaurant. I didn't understand what was happening then but Hong was able to explain it well in the book.

I cannot recommend this book enough. Hong wrote this book with courage and with all her heart - exposing her feelings with honesty and wit. Her writing is incredible and a true masterpiece. A dissertation of the Asian American experience. This is required reading and a must read!

Brava! A standing ovation!

Cathy Park Hong has written a raw open look at what it means to be Asian American in today’s society.The author shares with us cultural history from the past to the present,Through her eyes we learn about racism she suffers attitude and behavior she alerts us to and Asian Americans bsuffervfrom.Imlearned so much from her perspective found this book fascinating,#netgalley#randomhouse

A thought provoking essay collection about the author’s experience as an Asian American. Her writing style is quite heavy and, like many collections, some are stronger than others. This one is sure to get buzz in the new year.

Mind-blowing exploration of the background, history and insidiousness of racism pertaining to Asian Americans. So up to the minute current it's meme-able. Cathy Park Hong says stuff I've thought about but could never put so eloquently, yet she also inserts awful images in my head that I can't get out.

I don't like reading poetry or philosophy, but Minor Feelings was like a strange combination of the two that I couldn't get enough of. Park Hong's research, analysis and writing are all amazing; she's solving true crimes, describing Erin and Helen so exquisitely I feel as if I knew them myself, explaining complex terms like identititarianism, going back and breaking down the history of US legislation that first established exclusion in this country, and yet she would not let on as to what happened between her and her own mother. I cannot wait to read more from this writer.

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong is a collection of essays on race not from the binary of black and white, but through the experiences of what she deftly points out is a difficult label - Asian American. The first few essays feature memoir and cultural critique that it personal and a profound look at how white supremacy ensures that no matter how hard someone strives for the power and privilege that whiteness gifts, they will continue to be systematically and institutionally denied - through microagressions, representation on screen, and in pursuit of art. Hong's story of female friendship is one of the best portrayals that I have seen anywhere, and I loved the snippets of conversations that she includes to show how her friendship continues to influence her work even as we read it in this moment. There is a lot to love in this work and much like Ocean Vuong's "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous," this book will lead me to an extensive collection of poetry that I had not previously known about.

There are a few areas where I struggled with this quick read. The first is that Hong uses a lot of quotes throughout her essays, which support her ideas and give voice to the voices before her - but make me feel like I'm getting more of a collated set of references rather than a singular exploration. She also has a running theme of talking about the English language and her relationship to it that is highlighted by a few poetry passages, but it doesn't come through in the writing of the essays themselves. Lastly, I struggled with the chapters that were about art, since I didn't understand many of the references (there is a void in my knowledge when it comes to studio art of almost any kind). That being said, the stories that she tells still have themes that are moving and beg you to dig deeper. This reminded me a lot of "My Time Among the Whites" by Jennine Capo Crucet in it's struggle to better define our racial landscape and the impact that shifting modes of visibility/invisibility have on the experience of people of color depending on the context they are in.