My minor feelings
Cathy Park Hong, the author of Minor Feelings, is unabashed. Throughout her essays, she delves into confronting identity through the lens of her own lived experience without subtlety, exploring the complexities of what it means to be Asian and American, both wholly at the same time.
While debriefing the first essay, the one consensus that my book club group came to unanimously was the feeling of discomfort, an indescribable sense of uneasiness. Afterward, I wondered- what made us so uncomfortable? Why was our reaction toward the conversations about race and identity so unsettling?
As a daughter of Korean immigrant parents like Park Hong, it was easy for me to draw parallels between her internalized feelings and my own. As for my entire book club group, though I cannot speak for them, we had all chosen this book knowing its topic matter. Even if not by intention, we all still implicitly understood how personal it could reach.
Mostly, I think, we were stunned by the bluntness of Park Hong's writing. Reading about the internalized hatred that Asians feel, only more fueled by the pervasiveness of the model minority myth, at the very least disrupted my own perception of my Asian identity. The fact that I was in near disbelief when reading about the 1992 LA riots (though I had known of it to an extent, it was not taught in our history books as personally as I read in Park Hong's essay) made me realize how much I had bought into my own stereotype, that Asians are "good and smart".
Minor feelings, Park Hong explains, occur when "American optimism is enforced upon you, which contradicts your own racialized reality, thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance... [they are] also the emotions we are accused of having when we decide to be difficult- in other words, when we decide to be honest."
Maybe it could have been a psychological reflex, the way I felt so defensive of my identity after reading of all of these contradictions to the impression I held of who Asians were- not to mention then, who I was. Cathy Park Hong chooses to "be difficult" in her writing, to acknowledge everything: the flaws and all. Maybe my confused, sensitive reaction to it was, in and of itself, a minor feeling.
Emily, this was so well written and I completely agree with your opinion. I definitely think our perception of Asians is heavily skewed by the environment we're surrounded by and I was surprised when Dao(airplane guy) was described as a criminal, breaking that illusion.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way you started & ended this writing. You made the readers curious when you wrote a short claim that Hong is unabashed, and the ending was amazing, relating the concept Hong presents to yourself.
ReplyDeleteI was also really surprised of the ways Hong talks about races, and how straightforward she is. Because of this, I think I felt a little defensive too.