Skip to content

Quotes from Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning — Cathy Park Hong

born 1976 United States

← All quotes by Cathy Park Hong

14 quotes

To other English is to make audible the imperial power sewn into the language, to slit English open so its dark histories slide out.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Most white Americans can only understand racial trauma as a spectacle.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Innocence is both a privilege and a cognitive handicap, a sheltered unknowingness that, once protracted into adulthood, hardens into entitlement.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

I’d rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life is to be held accountable to history.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Ever since I started writing poetry seriously, I have used English inappropriately.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

The most damaging legacy of the West has been its power to decide who our enemies are, turning us not only against our own people, like North and South Korea, but turning me against myself.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Racial self-hatred is seeing yourself the way the whites see you, which turns you into your own worst

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Nothing gets dated faster than a joke.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

When I hear the phrase “Asians are next in line to be white,” I replace the word “white” with “disappear.” Asians are next in line to disappear.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

I have to address whiteness because Asian Americans have yet to truly reckon with where we stand in the capitalist white supremacist hierarchy of this country.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

The flip side of innocence is shame.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

As a poet, I have always treated English as a weapon in a power struggle, wielding it against those who are more powerful than me. But I falter when using English as an expression of love.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

My term “minor feelings” is deeply indebted to theorist Sianne Ngai, who wrote extensively on the affective qualities of ugly feelings, negative emotions—like envy, irritation, and boredom—symptomatic of today’s late-capitalist gig economy.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Childhood is a state of mind, whether it's a nostalgic return to innocence or a sudden flashback to unease and dread. If the innocence of childhood is being protected and comforted, the precarity of childhood is when one feels the least protected and comfortable.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Cathy Park Hong (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.