Cathy Park Hong Quotes (1976-)

“Blade Runner 2049 is an example of science fiction as magical thinking: whites fear that all the sins they committed against black and brown people will come back to them tenfold, so they fantasize their own fall as a preventative measure to ensure that the white race will never fall.”

“Hollywood, an industry that shapes not only our national but global memories, has been the most reactionary cultural perpetrator of white nostalgia, stuck in a time loop and refusing to acknowledge that America's racial demographic has radically changed since 1965. Movies are cast as if the country were still "protected" by a white supremacist law that guarantees that the only Americans seen are carefully curated European descendants.”

“Recently, I read a tweet by the poet Natalie Diaz, who asked, Why must writers of color always have to talk about whiteness? Why center it in our work when it's centered everywhere else?”

“White tears, as Damon Young explains in The Root, are why defeated Southerners refused to accept the freedom of black slaves and formed the Ku Klux Klan. And white tears are why 63 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women elected a malignant man-child as their leader.”

“She brings acute intelligence, scholarly knowledge, and recognizable vulnerability to the formation of a new school of thought she names minor feelings.”

“When I read Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, it felt like I was being shaken awake to something I had convinced myself wasn’t real. The subtle ways Asian Americans are dismissed; how Asian American women feel the need to apologize when taking up any sort of space. I was also floored by how she described the ripple effect of the Chinese Exclusion Act: how that fear of not wanting to stick out has been passed down through generations, and how this survival tactic limits us and can cause self-hate. And at the same time, Cathy shares stories that feel so personal, so fresh and so specific, nobody else could’ve written them. I had never read a depiction of three contemporary, young Asian American women that was so complicated, interesting or full of both love and conflict. Her writing is beautiful, funny, sharp and—most importantly to a working mother of two who has few brain cells left at the end of the day—easy to read. I annotated the hell out of Minor Feelings—it’s the kind of book you want to dog-ear and underline. Reading it was such a crazy feeling: I felt so seen that I couldn’t believe that this book existed. And it’s become even more painfully relevant in a year in which anti-Asian violence, which has always existed in America, has spiked so aggressively, putting our communities on high alert and searching for solidarity. This is the book to read when you ask me, “How can I be an ally?” This is the book to read if you want to educate yourself. This is the book to read if you want to be more in touch with your humanity.”