Narrator: An eight-year-old girl is on a walk with her grandmother in a quiet, pristine suburban neighborhood. Her grandmother, a refugee from the Korean War, is lonely and attempts to be friendly, shaking hands with a group of white children on a cul-de-sac. The children mock her, and then a tall girl sneaks up and kicks the grandmother as hard as she can, sending her to the ground. The children laugh. Later, the girl’s father, enraged and powerless, confronts the kicker, who simply denies it and runs away. The eight-year-old girl is left with a searing memory of humiliation, her father’s impotent rage, and a deep, unspoken shame.

This is the world that poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong unpacks in her groundbreaking book, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. She argues that such moments, and the complex, often contradictory emotions they produce, are not just personal traumas. They are the building blocks of a racialized consciousness, a set of "minor feelings" that define the Asian American experience—an experience that is consistently dismissed, ignored, and misunderstood by a society that prefers simple narratives of success.

Narrator: The central concept of the book is "minor feelings." These are not small emotions, but rather the nagging, dysphoric feelings of shame, irritation, and paranoia that arise when one's own reality is constantly questioned by the dominant culture. They are the result of the cognitive dissonance between the relentless optimism of the American dream and the daily, lived experience of racism. Because these feelings are often seen as an overreaction, they are dismissed, leading to a kind of psychic gaslighting.

Hong argues that this constant invalidation leads to a corrosive form of racial self-hatred. This is the act of seeing oneself through the eyes of white society, which turns a person into their own worst enemy. This self-hatred can manifest in unexpected ways, often as hostility towards others within one's own racial group.

Hong illustrates this with a painful memory from her time as a graduate student. She went for a pedicure and was served by a sullen Vietnamese teenager who seemed hostile and untrained. He was rough, ignored her requests, and eventually pinched her toe so hard with his clippers that he tore the cuticle. Enraged, Hong stood up, refused to pay, and hoped the boy would be punished. Years later, she reflects on the incident with shame, realizing she was an "unreliable narrator" of her own experience. She had projected her own class privilege and internalized racism onto the boy. She concludes, "He treated me badly because he hated himself. I treated him badly because I hated myself." This mutual, misdirected animosity was a direct product of racial self-hatred, a poison that pits the marginalized against each other.

Narrator: One of the most powerful forces creating minor feelings is the "model minority" myth. Hong dismantles this stereotype, revealing it not as a compliment but as a tool of control. It’s a narrative used to undermine Black civil rights, justify American exceptionalism, and keep Asian Americans compliant and invisible. The myth suggests that anyone can succeed through hard work, ignoring the systemic barriers that exist for other groups.

Hong exposes the lie of this myth through her own father's story. On paper, he was a model immigrant who came to America and became a successful entrepreneur. But the reality was far more complex. He lied on his visa application, claiming to be a mechanic. He worked a grueling job where a severe injury led to him being fired without compensation. He battled alcoholism and marital conflict. His success was not a simple story of pulling himself up by his bootstraps; it was a brutal fight for survival that left deep scars.

The book shows how this myth is not only false but dangerous. It erases the vast income inequality within the Asian American community and renders their struggles invisible. Furthermore, the myth offers only conditional acceptance. Hong tells the story of her friend, the poet Prageeta Sharma, who became the director of a creative writing program. As long as she was a compliant minority, she was accepted. But once she gained a position of power and spoke out against a racist and sexist incident, her "model minority" qualifications were used against her. Her colleagues turned on her, stripped her of her directorship, and cut her salary. Hong concludes that assimilation is not power; it’s a form of invisibility. Once an Asian American gains power and becomes visible, they become a target.

Narrator: A crucial part of Hong's reckoning is confronting the deliberate erasure of Asian American history and trauma. She argues that this silence is a form of violence in itself, perpetuating the invisibility of Asian American suffering. The most poignant exploration of this is her investigation into the life and death of the artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.

Cha was a visionary Korean American artist whose 1982 book, Dictee, is a foundational text of Asian American literature. Just one week after its publication, Cha was brutally raped and murdered in New York City. Yet, for decades, this fact was systematically omitted from academic and critical discussions of her work. Scholars would praise her for giving voice to the silenced women of Korean history while remaining completely silent about the atrocity that took her own life.

Hong finds this silence baffling and infuriating. She contrasts it with the intense biographical scrutiny of other tragic female artists like Sylvia Plath, concluding that Cha's identity as an Asian woman made her death less visible, less important. The media barely covered the murder, initially labeling her an "Oriental Jane Doe." This erasure is not an isolated incident. Hong points to the unreliable and often contradictory statistics on sexual assault against Asian American women, noting that they are sometimes excluded from studies altogether. This systemic neglect leaves Asian Americans stranded in their rage and grief, forced to recognize that their pain is not seen as worthy of public attention. By meticulously documenting the facts of Cha's murder, Hong performs a radical act of reclamation, insisting that this history will not be forgotten.

Narrator: In the final section of the book, Hong moves from diagnosis to a call for action. She argues that the path forward lies in rejecting the constrained, indebted identity forced upon Asian Americans and reclaiming a history of radical, intersectional activism.

She presents the life of Yuri Kochiyama as a powerful model. Kochiyama began as a patriotic Japanese American, even as she and her family were forced into an internment camp during World War II. It was only after moving to Harlem and being educated by her Black neighbors and friends that she began to understand her experience as part of a larger system of American racism. She became a fierce activist, a friend to Malcolm X, and a tireless advocate for Black liberation, Puerto Rican independence, and reparations for Japanese Americans. Kochiyama’s life demonstrates a "porous and large" sense of "we," built on solidarity and mutual aid.

Hong reminds readers that the very term "Asian American" was born from this radical spirit. Coined in 1968 by student activists inspired by the Black Power movement, it was a political identity, not just a demographic label. It was a declaration of solidarity against racism and imperialism. Hong argues that this radical history has been forgotten, replaced by a depoliticized identity focused on assimilation and economic success. She calls for a return to these roots, urging Asian Americans to reject their "conditional existence"—where belonging is always promised but never fully granted—and to build alliances with other vulnerable communities.

Narrator: Ultimately, Minor Feelings is a powerful refusal to be grateful. Cathy Park Hong rejects the narrative that immigrants and their children owe a debt to America for the opportunity to be here. Instead, she holds the nation accountable, declaring, "I am here because you were there." She connects her own family's story to the destructive legacy of American imperialism in Korea and around the globe. The book’s most important takeaway is a call to dismantle the idea of a "universal" experience, which is almost always implicitly white. Hong argues that the true universal is the "contained condition" of non-white people, who make up the global majority.

This book is more than a memoir; it is a vital work of cultural criticism that fundamentally changes how we see the Asian American experience. It challenges readers to move beyond simplistic narratives and confront the uncomfortable, untelegenic truths of race in America. The final question it leaves us with is not one of personal identity, but of collective responsibility: in a world where white supremacy is constantly evolving, who will we choose to be allies for?