Narrator: On April 9, 2017, a United Airlines flight was overbooked. When no one volunteered to give up their seat, the airline randomly selected a passenger to be removed. That passenger was David Dao, a sixty-nine-year-old Vietnamese doctor. He refused, explaining he had patients to see the next morning. What followed was a scene of shocking violence. Security officers dragged him from his seat, his face bloodied, his body limp, as other passengers watched in horror. The incident sparked global outrage, but for many Asian Americans, it felt like something more. It was a visceral, public display of a private, constant fear: the fear of being seen not as a person, but as an object that can be moved, disregarded, and broken.

This feeling—a persistent, low-grade, and often dismissed emotional state—is the central subject of Cathy Park Hong's groundbreaking book of essays, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. Hong argues that to understand the Asian American experience, one must first understand the complex emotional landscape shaped by a history of racism, invisibility, and the constant friction between American optimism and a dissonant reality.

Narrator: At its core, Minor Feelings introduces a new term to our vocabulary. "Minor feelings," as Hong defines them, are the racialized range of emotions that are consistently dismissed by the dominant culture. They are not small or insignificant; rather, they are feelings like shame, suspicion, and melancholy that arise when one’s perception of reality is constantly questioned or invalidated. As Hong puts it, they occur when "American optimism is forced upon you, which contradicts your own sense of reality."

These feelings are born from a lifetime of subtle slights and overt aggressions. Hong illustrates this through her own struggle with depression, which she describes as being rooted in anxiety and a deep sense of inadequacy. Seeking help, she specifically looks for a Korean American therapist, hoping for a "shortcut to understanding." Instead, the therapist, Eunice Cho, rejects her as a patient after a single consultation, citing paperwork issues and claiming they are not a good fit. This rejection, coming from someone she hoped would understand her, reinforces Hong's feelings of isolation and inadequacy, leaving her feeling even more hopeless. It’s a perfect example of a minor feeling: a personal hurt that is deeply entangled with racial identity, yet easily dismissed by others as a simple, unfortunate interaction.

Narrator: One of the primary sources of these minor feelings is the pervasive "model minority" myth. This stereotype paints Asian Americans as universally successful, hardworking, and problem-free. While it may seem like a positive stereotype, Hong argues it’s a cage. It serves to drive a wedge between Asian Americans and other minority groups, and it completely erases the struggles, poverty, and mental health crises within the Asian community.

This myth creates a conditional existence, where belonging is always promised but never fully granted. Hong chillingly reframes the common phrase, "Asians are next in line to be white," by replacing the word "white" with "disappear." Assimilation, she suggests, is a form of erasure. The story of poet Prageeta Sharma serves as a stark illustration. In 2007, Sharma was hired as the director of the creative writing program at the University of Montana. Despite her success, she faced a hostile environment. Colleagues engaged in a racist and sexist "prank," stealing a private article of her clothing. When she filed a harassment complaint, they turned on her, eventually stripping her of her directorship. Sharma’s experience shows that even when an Asian American achieves a position of power, the model minority myth offers no protection from racism. In fact, it can make the experience even more isolating, as the expectation of quiet success makes any complaint seem like an overreaction.

Narrator: Hong argues that minor feelings are able to fester because of a powerful societal force she calls "white innocence." This is the notion that white people are somehow unaware of their privilege or the racial hierarchy that benefits them. It’s a deflection of responsibility that places the burden of proof on people of color. As Hong writes, educating a white person about race is an exhausting, ontological task: "It’s like explaining to a person why you exist."

This innocence is a historical construct. Hong recounts a painful childhood memory of her grandmother taking a walk in their suburban neighborhood. Her grandmother, wanting to be friendly, greeted a group of white children. In response, they mocked her, and one of them kicked her so hard she fell to the ground. The children faced no consequences. This casual cruelty, protected by the presumed innocence of childhood, is a microcosm of a larger societal pattern. Hong argues that for people of color, childhood is often where innocence is lost, not where it is found. This is because racism forces an early awareness of one’s place in the world, treating children of color like adults and, as in the case of Hong's grandmother, adults like children.

Narrator: How does one fight back against invisibility and erasure? For Hong, the answer lies in art and language. She finds inspiration in the raw, confrontational comedy of Richard Pryor, who refused to cater to white audiences and instead spoke his truth, no matter how uncomfortable. This inspires Hong to find her own authentic voice, one that doesn't translate her experiences for a white audience but instead embraces its own complexities.

She explores this through the concept of "bad English"—the broken, accented English of her immigrant community. Instead of a source of shame, she reclaims it as a "fugitive tongue," a tool of resistance that disrupts the dominance of standard English. This artistic and political project is embodied in the life and work of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, a Korean American artist whose 1982 book Dictee is a landmark of Asian American literature. Cha used fragmented language and multiple perspectives to explore historical trauma and identity. Tragically, just days after its publication, Cha was raped and murdered in New York City. Her death was met with a deafening silence from the media and even from scholars of her work. Hong argues this erasure is part of the same violence that took her life, treating her as just another "Oriental Jane Doe." By telling Cha's story, Hong insists on remembering both the art and the life, refusing to let the violence of erasure have the final word.

Narrator: In the book's final essays, Hong moves from the personal to the political, arguing that the only way forward is through solidarity. She examines the history of the term "Asian American," which was not a demographic category but a political identity forged in the 1960s by activists inspired by the Black Power movement. It was a term of solidarity, meant to unite disparate groups against shared oppression.

Hong fears this radical edge has been lost, with many Asian Americans internalizing the model minority myth and becoming "junior partners" in white supremacy. To counter this, she points to the life of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American woman who was sent to an internment camp during World War II. That experience radicalized her, and she dedicated her life to activism, becoming a close ally of Malcolm X. She was the woman famously photographed cradling his head as he lay dying. Kochiyama’s life is a powerful testament to the necessity of cross-racial solidarity. It’s a rejection of the conditional belonging offered by the dominant culture in favor of a shared struggle for liberation. Hong concludes with the powerful activist slogan, "I am here because you were there," linking the presence of immigrants in America directly to the history of U.S. imperialism abroad.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Minor Feelings is that these feelings are not minor at all. They are a diagnostic tool, a political compass pointing directly to the fault lines of race, class, and gender in America. They reveal the psychological cost of a national narrative that preaches equality while practicing exclusion. Cathy Park Hong’s work is a powerful reckoning, an unflinching look at the shame and anger that comes from being rendered invisible, and a call to transform that pain into a new kind of consciousness.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge: to reject the "solipsism of white innocence" and the divisive logic of the model minority myth. It asks us to look past the superficial markers of success and see the shared histories of displacement and oppression that connect marginalized communities. The ultimate question is not just about how Asian Americans can find their voice, but how we can all learn to listen, and in doing so, build a future where no one’s reality is dismissed as minor.