"As the daughter of Korean immigrants, poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these 'minor feelings' occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality -- when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they're dissonant -- and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions to haunt her. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this book traces Hong's relationship to the English language, to depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings is an utterly original exploration of Asian American consciousness."--Back cover.