A memoir-infused essay collection, Hong’s book offers a candid, incisive reflection on a variety of topics related to art, Asian American identity, performance, and relationship.

It is obvious when reading this book that Hong’s primary medium is poetry. Along with sentences steeped intention, rich vocabulary permeates each chapter and gives the personal, thoughtful reflections an urgency and intensity that makes this book particularly remarkable. A relatively short book by page count, Hong wastes not a word throughout the collection.

A main theme I noticed while reading Minor Feelings was Hong’s internal tension between being a token Asian American voice, expected to represent a wide swath of uncollapsible identities, and so deeply not wanting to hold that role. Ironically, I think the book’s subtitle is misleading in this way. It made me wonder whether Hong had a say in it — was it a conscious, combative choice or a miss on the part of the editors who boiled down the work in the precise way it asks not to be? The book covers such an array of topics and wrestles with the bifurcation experienced by those who are simultaneously privileged and oppressed. Naming it as an “Asian American reckoning” is, in my opinion, somewhat flattening.

All that to say: read this book. It’s important and deliberate and raw. I learned a lot but beyond that, I feel grateful to have experienced Hong’s incredible writing. Minor Feelings lands up there with The Undocumented Americans on my “everyone should read this” list.