Minor Feelings
Cathy Park Hong's 2020 essay collection takes its title from the small, unbeautiful emotions, shame, irritation, suspicion, paranoia, that she argues Asian Americans are routinely told they are not entitled to feel. Hong, a poet by training, moves between memoir and cultural criticism across seven loosely linked essays, writing about her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants in Los Angeles, her uneasy friendships with two other women of color in art school, the murder of the comedian Richard Pryor's body of work by white critics, and the long history of Asian American invisibility in U.S. literature and politics. The book argues that the model minority myth is itself a tool of anti-Black racism, and it does so without flattening the argument into slogan. Minor Feelings became a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and a generational touchstone, especially after the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Minor Feelings
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A poet writes seven essays on Asian American life, race, depression, art-school friendships, and her parents. The book is a finalist for the Pulitzer and was a touchstone of post-2020 anti-Asian-violence reading lists.
Minor Feelings is a 2020 essay collection by Cathy Park Hong, blending memoir with cultural criticism. It examines Asian American identity, art, race, and the specific emotional category Hong calls minor feelings.
Yes. Minor Feelings won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography in 2020 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It became one of the most discussed nonfiction books of 2020 in conversations about race and identity.
Minor Feelings was written by Cathy Park Hong, published in 2020 by One World.
Minor Feelings is 224 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Minor Feelings takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
Minor Feelings is a standalone novel by Cathy Park Hong, not part of a series.
Minor Feelings is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.