Minor Feelings
Rating: 3.5 / 5 stars
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High-Level Thoughts
Eye-opening book on cultural criticism and racialized consciousness in America. Hong provides an awareness of multiple problems experienced by people of color. Well worth the read for anyone interested in cultural identity and the history of Asian immigrants in America.
“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.”
Summary Notes
Standout Quotes
“We are the carpenter ants of the service industry, the apparatchiks of the corporate world. We are match-crunching middle managers who keep the corporate wheels greased but who never get promoted since we don’t have the right “face” of leadership.”
“Three Chinese laborers died for every two miles of track built to make Manifest destiny reality, but when the celebratory photo of the Golden Spike was taken, not a single Chinese man was welcome to pose with the other — white — railway workers”
“Once you have acquired power, you are exposed, and your model minority qualifications that helped you in the past can be used against you, since you are no longer invisible.”
“Never use the word ‘audience.’ The very idea of a public, unless a poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me.”
“White boys will always be boys but black boys are ten times more likely to be tried as adults and sentenced to life without parole”
“If the innocence of childhood is being protected and comforted, the precarity of childhood is when one feels the least protected and comfortable.”
“The problem with silence is that it can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance, or even shame, and eventually, this silence passes over into forgetting.”
“If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering”
“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.”
“Even if we’ve been here for four generations, our status here remains conditional; belonging is always promised and just out of reach so that we behave, whether it’s the insatiable acquisition of material belongings or belonging as a peace of mind where we are absorbed into mainstream society.”
Top 5 Lessons
Credit not shown. Multiple times there were recorded events of Asian American workers not being given the credit they deserved. Historically and even in today’s day with the representation in the workforce. Speaking up is essential to advocate for the objective facts you did to make a project come to fruition.
Broken English barriers. Immigrants learn a second language when arriving here. This puts you steps behind those who have lived here for generations in how you articulate and advocate for yourself. This is the situation and challenges presented for many people of color. If you want to learn both the mother tongue and English, double the energy is required.
Crossing lanes. Inspiration cannot happen without the intersection of ideas between groups. Staying in your lane and consuming the same information pigeonholes yourself into one way of thinking. Cross barriers and don’t stay in your lane to learn more ideas to innovate and prosper further.
Exposure. Acquiring power and presence changes your model minority relationship. You are no longer invisible and the game changes with who you are playing around. Navigating the situation strategically each step of the way. Find ways to highlight your attributes and identity to not forget that side.
White Innocence. Expectations of children differ based on race. Racist remarks are shown where children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children. Speaking up when these situations arise where appropriate changes the unconscious narrative.
