Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings Reviewed at New York Times

Jennifer Szalai begins her review of Cathy Park Hong's collection of essays exactly where the book begins, on the cusp of a yearlong depression signaled by an imaginary facial tic. Park Hong turns to an unexpected source of relief: Richard Pryor. More on that point:

A liberating figure for Hong turns out to be the comedian Richard Pryor, whose standup special she watched during her depression, marveling at his freewheeling delivery and his brave attire: a red silk shirt that unforgivingly revealed dark blooms of sweat. She knows that the affiliation she’s claiming is unexpected, but what drew her to Pryor was his ability to channel a range of “minor feelings” that included melancholy and shame. He would strut across the stage one moment, confidently delivering an impression, and in the next he would trail off to let the discomfort linger after a double-edged joke.

Citing the poet Claudia Rankine and the theorist Sianne Ngai, Hong distinguishes minor feelings from the major emotions that propel typical narrative arcs and moments of revelation. Minor feelings don’t lend themselves to catharsis or change; they’re ambient and chronic, “built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.”

Head to the New York Times to read on!