Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
“For the last twenty years, until recently, Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories were the template of ethnic fiction that supports the fantasy of Asian American immigrants as compliant strivers. The fault lies not in Lahiri herself, who I think is an absorbing storyteller, but in the publishing industry that used to position her books as the “single story” on i
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Asians lack presence. Asians take up apologetic space. We don’t even have enough presence to be considered real minorities. We’re not racial enough to be token. We’re so post-racial we’re silicon.
Cathy Park Hong • Minor Feelings: A Reckoning on Race and the Asian Condition
In my search for an honest way to write about race, I wanted to comfort the afflicted, but more than that, I wanted to afflict the comfortable; I wanted to make them squirm in shame, probably because I too identify with the comfortable.
Cathy Park Hong • Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
There was no reason for me to be depressed. But anytime I was happy, the fear of an awful catastrophe would follow, so I made myself feel awful to preempt the catastrophe’s hitting. Overtaxed by this anxiety, I sank into deep depression.
Cathy Park Hong • Minor Feelings: A Reckoning on Race and the Asian Condition
Even to declare that I’m writing for myself would still mean I’m writing to a part of me that wants to please white people.
Cathy Park Hong • Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
what I call minor feelings: the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. Minor feelings arise, for instance, upon hearing a slight, knowing it’s racial, and be
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