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She’s helped Asian-Americans be angry: Cathy Park Hong’s book Minor Feelings has a fan in Ali Wong and has made the poet an accidental spokeswoman

Published in 2020, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning contains essays that explore Cathy Park Hong’s experience as a Korean-American and a poet

Anti-Asian violence during the pandemic helped spur her book to greater heights than she expected, and she has gained fans in people like Ali Wong and Greta Lee

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Korean-American poet Cathy Park Hong’s career changed radically in 2020 with the release of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, a collection of essays. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 5:15am, 15 Oct 2022Updated: 6:06am, 15 Oct 2022

Here is a sample of the questions Cathy Park Hong has been asked in the past two years.

Asian people want to know what they should do when they are microaggressed: “What should I say to someone who says, ‘Where do you come from?’”

White people ask her how to be a better ally: “What do I do if I witness a microaggression against one of my co-workers who is Asian-American?” Podcast hosts ask her what it means for Asian history to be erased in America.

Once, when she was giving a talk in South Korea, a college student came up to the mic during the Q&A. “My mother is super-toxic,” the student told Hong. “I don’t know how to make her understand my identity as a queer person. What do you think I should do?”

Hong, 46, is a poet by trade. Since 2002, she has published three collections themed around empire, civilisations and invented languages, which have earned her a small, dedicated fandom in the world of avant-garde poetry. But in 2020, her career changed radically with the release of Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, a collection of essays that explore her experience as a Korean-American and a poet.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was a US novelist, producer, director, and artist of South Korean origin. Hong wrote about her in one of her essays.

The book, Hong says, was an attempt to “articulate Asian-American interiority” as well as a broader effort to recast and refine conversations about Asian-Americanness.