Ken Chen Talks to Cathy Park Hong About Minor Feelings

Ken Chen talks to Cathy Park Hong, author of a new essay collection, Minor Feelings (One World, February 2020), for the latest issue of BOMB. "While one typically imagines the reaction to racial prejudice as anger or despair," writes Chen in the introduction, "Cathy’s fragmented essays portray Asian American identity as a kind of sadomasochism: identity as the stuff of shame and internalized self-hatred, neuroses and overwhelming anxiety—all the lovely stuff we discussed one afternoon at the Cullman Center at the main branch of the New York Public Library." From that discussion:

CPH  I was always interested in writing about race but preferred doing so in a roundabout way. I didn’t feel I had a way into the personal stories through poetry or prose. But then in 2011, I watched Richard Pryor’s Live in Concert (1979). It was a revelation. I was depressed and my mind lit up. Probably because my natural mode as a writer is tragicomedy.

KC  Gallows humor.

CPH  Yes. I was interested in how Pryor used humor as a trapdoor to engaging difficult subjects. He’s more honest about race, about racial self-hatred, than many literary writers. Not many writers pursue interracial lust in the frank way that Pryor does. Ronaldo Wilson does it; Saeed Jones too. But Pryor really spelled it out. I was inspired by him, and what attracted me most to stand-up was the sadomasochism. At any second you could fall flat on your face. The shame and humiliation was attractive. (laughter) Those were my main feelings associated with my identity or the Asian American condition, not grief and rage.

So how could I turn this into a literary mode? I hated doing poetry readings, so I started doing stand-up instead of reading my poetry up there.

KC  I remember when you were doing these comedy events. What were they like?

CPH  They were really bad! I don’t want to repeat the jokes, as they would offend people. They were off-color.

I also tried to write absurdist poems, and that didn’t work. I tried the same ideas as a novel, which also didn’t work. Eventually the project became this essay collection. The book is made up of reinvented passages from that failed novel and failed poems...

The full interview is at BOMB.