Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Cathy Park Hong uses her personal history as a Korean American poet to define "minor feelings," the dissonant internal state that occurs when American optimism clashes with the reality of structural racism. Through a series of linked essays, she traces how this psychological friction shapes the daily lives of Asian Americans. She critiques the model minority myth, examines the complexities of female friendship, and recovers the history of artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Hong analyzes how language and art serve as tools to resist the pressure to assimilate into a white-dominated cultural landscape.

This book is for readers who want an unsentimental look at the racial hierarchy in the United States and the specific invisibility of the Asian American experience. Those interested in the intersection of aesthetics and politics will find a framework for understanding how creativity survives under scrutiny. Readers walk away with a vocabulary for the quiet, pervasive discomfort that defines life on the margins. It provides a means to identify the subtle ways institutional expectations suppress individual identity and historical memory.