The essays wander a variegated terrain of memoir, criticism and polemic, oscillating between smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt.

Whereas many personal narratives present a singular perspective, Hong’s approach is more expansive.

Hong's lived experience schooled her in the pain of being a nonwhite American. She summoned it and added a layer of rich research and critical analysis to school the rest of us on that perspective.

Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured.

... offers a fierce excavation of her experience as an Asian American woman living and working as a poet and artist. Historical traumas and cultural criticism combine and are woven through this erudite essay collection of family, art history, female relationships and racial awareness.

In the first half of Minor Feelings, Hong moves between her experience and a wider survey of Asian American history.

The seven essays in Minor Feelings deftly ho[m]e in on Hong’s intimate experiences and zoom out to broader explorations of racism. She employs the first-person modular essay, offering facts, vignettes, observations, and reflections in short, relatively disconnected sections that layer and build upon each other, making space for insight and revelations in the gaps between the sections—possibly a prose form as close to poetry as you can get. It allows Hong to refuse tidy conclusions and juxtapose ideas for surprising and immediate revelations that evoke, and distort, cover, and uncover her subject matter. In this space of discomfort, Hong carries the conversation not only beyond the binary of Black and white, but also beyond the false monolith of 'Asian America'.

I didn’t find Hong’s ruminations on the inconsistency of the Asian American political identity on which 'the paint.

Hong writes of Asians in sweeping terms—‘From invisible girlhood, the Asian American woman will blossom into fetish object.’ While this experience may seem common, it is hard to believe it is universal. But elsewhere, Hong holds herself to account for her own assumptions.

... bracing.

Dry and delightfully off-key, Hong’s sense of humor is anchored in self-mockery, if not self-flagellation.

... weaves together personal immigrant narrative and historical anecdote into a collection of thoughtful essays, simmering in quiet rage.

... presents a fraught and considerate attempt to say what it means to be Asian American today.

... could serve as a Cliff Notes to Asian American existence for anyone new to the subject (white or otherwise). Hong briskly brings everyone up to speed.

Hong interrogates dominant ideologies through fragmentation and juxtaposition. She thematically weaves nonlinear threads of personal narrative, cultural criticism, literary criticism, history, popular culture, and current events to reveal the intricate inner workings of our capitalist white supremacist patriarchy.

Poet and essayist Hong’s family history beautifully details how her life and art have been shaped by her Korean American identity.

... this is one of the things the book accomplishes: building a deep and immediate sense of connection, intimacy and awareness.

Title aside, nothing is minor about Hong’s taut, sharp collection. The award-winning poet’s prose debut will elicit comparisons to contemporary race-conscious luminaries—think Claudine Rankine, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Roxane Gay—but Hong’s singular voice expresses both reclamation and declaration.

... blistering.

Hong offers a fierce and timely meditation on race and gender issues from her perspective as a Korean American woman.