Cathy Park Hong

I won a copy of this in a Goodreads giveaway, but I would've gotten a copy of my own, likely (it comes out on 2/25/20 next week!)

These essays are autobiographical but also examine the place Asian Americans have in the American consciousness (and what does that term even mean, because while it began as a political statement of solidarity has it fallen into a banal umbrella grouping?)

There are so, so many chunks of essay where I felt seen to my core- how to grapple with being a minority, the only one in your class at school while also being treated as white-adjacent (I recall in middle school, a peer made a joke about tennis shoes being made by children in China and when I made a face he was like, "why should you care? You're American!"), or by noting the privacy of hiding our trauma (and yet, it seems like that's the only story we're allowed to tell even though to be frank, Asian American history *is* full of trauma). At the same time she ponders a broad history/consciousness, she is intensely personal- thinking about the parallel specificity between her family and [a:Theresa Hak Kyung Cha|52223|Theresa Hak Kyung Cha|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1286468056p2/52223.jpg]'s, between whether or not it is lurid or shedding light on Theresa's rape and murder.

I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while, and will probably revisit it during APAHM.… (more)

Intense. Complex. Complicating. Angry (but in a positive and reclaiming way which I understand as a woman if I can not understand as a white person) the Oberlin parts were…I’m not sure…interesting, but in a gossipy way about a toxic but important friendship in the way that many female relationships are portrayed—or maybe that’s a description of many female relationships? Our oppression can only ever be manifested as competitive and toxic. I’m not sure though. I’ll have to think on it. I will think a lot about this book. It is a familiar story of racism told in a very new and powerful way.… (more)