I had a one book book club back in June with Shicong, Keva, and Greg for the book Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. I was the one who took notes, so most of my thoughts are not transcribed, but I mostly got what everyone else shared. Besides some minor cleanups on my end, these notes are unaltered.

Q: What did everyone like?

Greg:

Liked the different perspective that it provided, specifically about her exploration of what “we” meant as Asian Americans

Keva:

Some history about the collective we. How did the term “Asian American” come into being in the 1960s?
Asian Americans as a whole are a very different group. There is a lot of complexity to Asian American identity, although it is often discussed as a singular monolithic identity
Was also interested in the ways in which she was talking about the different forms of narrating racial identity: lyricism, prose, stand up, etc
Different artistic form conjure up feeling for being Asian American, a way for Asian American identity to become legible
Liked the ways in which her essays probe different areas of Asian identity, specifically the juxtaposition / tension of those histories
This sense of privilege she alludes to, how do Asians fit in the US white / black relationship?
Not about belonging but about racial complexities
Took some time to warm up to it

Shicong:

Similar sentiment, but not exactly because I don’t identify as Asian American
First publication discussing Asian Americans that I have read
Reading this was accepting identity as immigrant in US
Before that I was just a tourist. Been here for 8 years, but didn’t have a childhood growing up in this environment
Outstanding that she is able to consolidate all these “minor feelings” from growing up and being part of this cultural system and attack these nuances w a lot of precision
More obvious to me because as an outsider when I arrived in america I experienced all of these up front (it was culture shock to me)
Re the Cha chapter & her personal chapter on art, have very similar experiences of being an Asian women in fine arts, grappling w/ mental illnesses
Enjoyed those essays very much

Q: How important do you feel like is your racial identity?

Justin:

I liked this quote a lot: “I began this book as a dare to myself. I still clung to a prejudice that writing about my racial identity was minor and non-urgent, a defense that I had to pry open to see what throbbed beneath it.”
While reading this book I continually struggled with feeling that my racial identity was not important, and there were other more pressing and urgent issues to engage with. What do you all think?

Greg:

What she calls minor feelings does feel less urgent
But at the same time to be a better ally it is important to have space to define Asian American identity outside of white supremacy
Liked the poem with a lot of periods about bad english. Felt like an Asian American way of engaging with this subject
A lot of Asian American mainstream art feels very superficial / flawed in that way. For 88 rising it’s very much a performance of black culture done by Asian Americans rather than things that are authentically Asian American. Crazy Rich Asians is another example.l
I like that she seems to be fighting that urge that it is not important and not urgent

Shicong:

Why does it have to be a competition
Doesn’t have to be a binary, be a ladder
We are allies but the experience is different

Greg:

Racial triangulation: there is a common enemy, people fighting for scraps are caught in the crossfire

Keva:

Agree with a lot of what you all are saying
Something that I’ve been grappling with in particular in the last few months: BLM protests, uprising, moment of racial reckoning the US
What does it mean to be a researcher / teacher of Asian American studies? What does it mean to teach race right now?
Thinking about transnational solidarity, not just national
Interconnected thru a particular moment in the cold war: US intervention in Asia to secure global capitalism. Goes back to this question of how race and capitalistic accumulation of white supremacy intersect. Race is a product of that
What it means to think about interconnectedness of struggles is to visit 1960s and think about solidarity then, and think of moments not just as romanticizing moments and how we can understand race today
Revisit Asian American politics that looks towards transnational connections
For example: usage of tear gas against protestors, a substance that gained popularity for US armed forces in the Vietnam War as a tool of quelling communist insurrections
Ways in which the material tech of war / tech trafficked thru different sites in the war
We need to attend to specificity but also need to understand / build forms of solidarity and connectedness

Q: What did everyone think about Dictee and the Cha chapter?

Shicong:

What did everyone think about Dictee? Specifically Keva?
How she went about investigating Dictee?
What they left out about Dictee and Cha?
Found it a very haunting chapter, probing the history that no one talks about it

Keva:

Cha and Dictee are both very important in Asian American literary scholarship
But no one really discusses the details
A lot of concern about the legitimacy of Asian American as a site of worthy study, so early scholars wanted to prioritize the aesthetic part of Dictee
The explicit violence “overshadows the work” lingers over the analysis of the work
Appreciate the care of how she went about it, to reckon w this history
Asian American art always about trauma
Explicit move to separate art from artist’s experience

Greg:

Found it very disturbing as well
The ongoing fight to legitimize Asian American studies must be difficult
Feels weird to ignore it considering how crazy it is & that it is relevant
Just as a feeling, it’s very frustrating bc a lot of different things don’t have to justify their legitimacy
I can empathize w the people who made those decisions but kind of sad that it was felt necessary

Keva:

Different aesthetic forms
Two mediums she didn’t talk about are film & games
Games are an interesting medium for thinking about racial identity. You get to play the character & how it mediates different racial experiences
What are different ways of expressing racial identity?
Often times can be rendered a little shallow/ simplistic

Greg:

The basic common examples are: “Where are you really from”, “Having to help parents with English”

Keva:

Those can be a reductive way to render Asian American experience, but can be helpful for people who are just entering that space
Ambivalent feelings about that. It is helpful but a very played out trope, can be reductive
Changed my mind when I saw students use it as a gateway to enter more complex discussions about Asian American history and identity

Q: Who is this book for?

Justin:

Who is this book for?

Shicong:

herself

Justin:

yes but I think there’s more because she talks often about thinking about her audience

Keva:

Also for mainstream Asian Americans
There are moments where she narrates it in a similar way as people do for white people
But also some complexities she explores. Basically an intro Asian American studies to help Asian Americans explore their identity deeper
Not for an academic audience but academics fit into it really well. For a more mainstream Asian American audience

Greg:

I felt like that too. I would feel OK recommending this to someone who hasn’t thought about Asian identity that much