Cathy Park Hong

there's so much to like here in these essays. she's a poet so her writing is thoughtful and powerful.

what was most impactful for me:
- she said that the japanese internment camps were used as a basis for the muslim registry that trump and his allies tried to implement early in his presidency. i don't remember that being used as justification and am disgusted if it was. i thought we'd all roundly disavowed that awfulness in our past, but to use it to move forward with the demonizing of another group?
- a quote from jess row, in his book white flights: "America's great and possibly catastrophic failure is its failure to imagine what it means to live together."
-"Whether it's through retribution or indebtedness, who are we when we become better than them in a system that destroyed us?"
-a quote from lorraine o'grady in 2018: "In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people."

and, without a doubt, what i most take away from this book is the idea that she talks about when she talks about the immigrant and diverse stories that the publishing industry has championed, and the books that i've loved as a reader. are they books that specifically appeal to some stereotypes or messages directed to white people? do i like them because they tell a certain story? is it a comfortable story that makes me feel like i'm getting the perspective of a person of color but it's really whitewashed for my benefit? i don't know the answer but i've never really considered the question in a way that i should have. i will be thinking about it now.… (more)

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)