How Cathy Park Hong became liberal Americas go-to Asian thinker.
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Here is a sampleof the questions Cathy Park Hong has been asked in the past two years.
Podcast hosts ask her what it means for Asian history to be erased in America.
My mother is super-toxic, the student told Hong.
I dont know how to make her understand my identity as a queer person.
What do you think I should do?
Hong, who is 46, is a poet by trade.
The collection came out four days before the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in New York.
Donald Trump soon began tweeting about the Chinese Virus.
Its a book that is angry about all the things we should be angry about.
Universities and publications put the book on their anti-Asian-racism resource lists.
And infinitely better than placing the responsibility on an Asian friend to educate you.)
It made its way intoGood Morning Americas book club, the New YorkTimesbest-seller list, and the Pulitzer-finalists list.
She thought she had to beat out all this other competition, Hong told me.
I was like, Theres no competition.
Its a book of essays.
Minor Feelingsis now in its 19th print run with 175,000 copies in circulation.
Two years after its publication, it has become COVID canon.
In 2021, she was featured on thecover ofTimemagazineas one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
I was like,What?
Im not even one of the most influential people in Carroll Gardens, Hong told me this past summer.
It felt like it was happening to an avatar, another person named Cathy Park Hong.
On an afternoon in June, I met her there.
The living room was meticulously clean for a household with a 7-year-old child.
(Is that the right metaphor?
she murmured to herself after answering one of my questions.)
in poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop.
She now teaches creative writing at Rutgers.
I deeply admire him, Hong said.
I dont really see my book as a parallel.)
She told me that she now likes what they ended up with because it could be read two ways.
Asian Americanis a modifier, so its a reckoning thats Asian American, she said.
But you could also readAsian Americanas a noun.
An Asian American me doing some reckoning.
The subtitle, one could also imagine, likely helped to sell more copies.
I never had any goals to be a public intellectual.
Its not a position that I feel natural or comfortable in, Hong was careful to emphasize.
During the early days of the pandemic, after the release ofMinor Feelings,Hong was stuck at home.
She began tweeting about the pandemic.
That April, she had written anop-ed in the New YorkTimesabout the early-pandemic hate crimes (I am enraged.
She went on Ibram X. Kendis podcast to talk about interracial solidarity.
During Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, more requests rolled in.
The pundits seat, of course, comes with its own set of expectations.
But can we stop with the Andrew Yang is not a real New Yorker?
Like what Hollywood film before 2019 has NOT been anti-Asian?
I dont think its a good model for other young Asians.)
Its not just white people.
People from your own community are hungry for visibility.
Asian America, whatever that might mean, is in a rapid state of transition.
Overall, I think my essential thinking about Asians is still the same, she said.
I think Ive said all that I have.
Shes glad it has made other Asians feel less isolated.
But shes still grappling with the territory.
And I have to constantly tell them that I am none of those things.
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