Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

Even to declare that I’m writing for myself would still mean I’m writing to a part of me that wants to please white people.

Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise.

We are the carpenter ants of the service industry, the apparatchiks of the corporate world. We are math-crunching middle managers who keep the corporate wheels greased but who never get promoted since we don’t have the right “face” for leadership.

But where does the silence that neglects her end, and where does the silence that respects her begin?

White people were looking at themselves and what their history has wrought, like a domestic animal having its face shoved into its own urine.”

When I teach Dictee, I tell my students to approach the book as if they’re learning a new language, so that language is not a direct expression of them but putty in their mouths that they’re shaping into vowels.

During this period the model minority myth was popularized to keep Communists—and black people—in check. Asian American success was circulated to promote capitalism and to undermine the credibility of black civil rights: we were the “good” ones since we were undemanding, diligent, and never asked for handouts from the government. There’s no discrim

“I’m not ready to heal,” I said as gently as I could because I was afraid how she’d respond. She nodded. “I respect that,” she said, and walked away.

“You know, I don’t think she ever lost her shit around her white friends.” “Yeah, well,” Erin said ruefully, “we were family.”