Cathy Park Hong addresses complicated issues in ‘Let’s Talk About Race’ series

Award-winning poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong talked about her experiences as an author and poet of Asian American descent, about balancing truth with consideration for others’ privacy, working in primarily white spaces, and how she had to move past her own preconceived notions to identify her truths during a conversation with a UB audience last week.

The conversation on April 21, part of the “Let’s Talk about Race” series, was presented by the Office of Inclusive Excellence and the Gender Institute.

“When I was approached last year about who to invite to UB’s ‘Let’s Talk About Race’ series, I immediately suggested Cathy Park Hong,” said Carrie Tirado Bramen, professor of English and director of the Gender Institute, who served as moderator of the segment with Hong.

“Cathy Park Hong is a brilliant writer and thinker, one of the most astute cultural critics writing today, and I’m grateful that the UB Gender Institute could collaborate with Despina Stratigakos, vice provost for inclusive excellence, to make this event possible,” Bramen said.

The conversation with Hong was conducted virtually, and after introducing Hong, Bramen took questions from the attendees.

Hong talked about her book, “Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning,” a New York Times Bestseller that earned her a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hong was also listed in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, 2021.

“The essays in ‘Minor Feelings’ are part of an internal journey taking place,” Hong said. “My editor (Victory Matsui, Random House Publishing) said it was important that ‘Minor Feelings’ was an emotional journey, not just an intellectual journey. I wanted to lay emphasis on making an argument and I wanted to be persuasive, which is much harder to pull off with poetry.

“Ultimately, ‘Minor Feelings’ was a corrective, an intervention, decolonizing my own mind, unpacking that process would also be persuasive towards other people, other readers,” she said. “It had to happen in this work of non-fiction because it’s harder to pull off persuasion with poetry.”

For those who haven’t read the book, Hong described the term “minor feelings” as the range of chronic, non-cathartic feelings like shame, paranoia, suspicion and melancholy, and those emotions you feel when your racialized reality is not seen, met or received by the dominant culture at large.

“People mistake minor feelings as microaggressions, but it’s also macroaggressions. It’s about not being acknowledged and Asian Americans feeling very much alone,” Hong said. “It’s also what happens when you live in a country like America, where you are fed this idea of American exceptionalism and meritocracy, and the idea that you can lift yourself up and your reality doesn’t reflect that at all.”

When asked about sharing personal information in her book and navigating the lives of others in her work, Hong said she struggled with it because she didn’t have to worry about disclosing her own or others’ personal information in her previous works of poetry and fiction.

“Because ‘Minor Feelings’ is nonfiction, it was the first time I was more concerned about trespassing someone’s privacy, especially someone who I was close to,” Hong said.

An essay in the book called “An Education” replays a conversation Hong had with a friend who demanded that Hong not share a certain personal tragedy about her in the book.

“With my friend, she had a really good point. She said that as an artist of color, her trauma, if revealed, would tend to be marketed in such a way that sort of cannibalizes her work,” Hong said. “I’ve been asked about ethics and writing about friends and families, and everyone handles it differently. You must write your emotional truths. To get it all out there, every single bit, all the secrets, cruel memories, cruel judgments you may have, and then afterwards, correspond with the people you love and are writing about, tell them, and ask their permission as well.”

One of the last questions Hong received anonymously was about traversing the “very white spaces as an Asian America, especially when you’re the only person of the color in the office or department, do you keep your head down and never really speak the truth about the racism you feel and see on campus? Or do speak up and speak out and just get ignored and viewed harshly for behaving outside your stereotype?”

Hong said she could identify with the person who submitted the question and previously found herself in that same situation.

“There were many instances, where out of survival and because I didn’t want to get fired — because it’s about power — that I just kept my head down,” she said. “I didn’t amplify myself and I regret it. I would say now, that if you’re the only Asian American in a white space, that you don’t minimize yourself, your feelings, or your presence, and that you stand firm and that you make yourself as clear and loud as possible.

“If you’re not in a position of power,” she said, “it’s really important to find a community outside of that white space that will support you and guide you; it’s really important if you’re in that white space that you campaign and rally for other people of color and try to diversify that space as well.”

After the session, Bramen said she was impressed and grateful for the questions and commentary that audience members posted, and that she has received very positive feedback from across campus, from faculty and staff to students.

“Cathy Park Hong challenges easy thinking, ‘feel good’ platitudes, and clichés; she analyzes contradictions, whether they are her own or our society’s, and that is why her work stands out,” Bramen said. “She isn’t afraid to go deep and explore the unconscious habits of toxic thought in our country and the ways in which we internalize them regardless of who we are.

“No one is immune,” Bramen said. “But her work also shows us how to confront honestly this toxicity and to understand it in terms that go beyond the individual to include history, structures of power, and the importance of friendship and alliances.

“My goal was to ask questions that drew out the richness and the complexity of her thinking.”