paperback, 224 pages
Published March 2, 2021 by One World.
This book highlights the emotions, frustrations, challenges, and hard-won successes of immigrants to the US. I felt befriended with the characters, empathetic to their unnecessarily difficult journeys, and furious on their behalf. Recommended.
I don't think I'm in the target audience for this, so please disregard anything I say.
I found it painfully neurotic. Not that I'm not neurotic too; just that each essay is a study in different neuroses, and there is little to no intersection between hers and mine. I could not relate, nor could I engage with her language which was at times conversational and other times abstrusely academic. The whole thing felt disjointed both at a macro and micro level: each essay was completely unrelated to the last, costing energy to get into; and within each essay there were deeply gripping pages followed by tedious ones.
But again: I'm not the target audience. Maybe it's targeted toward other Asian Americans, as catharsis or perhaps recognition of their experience? I learned of this book from [a:Mira Jacob|7273922|Mira Jacob|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391461840p2/7273922.jpg]'s Instagram feed. (Jacob writes in a way which I think reaches a …
I don't think I'm in the target audience for this, so please disregard anything I say.
I found it painfully neurotic. Not that I'm not neurotic too; just that each essay is a study in different neuroses, and there is little to no intersection between hers and mine. I could not relate, nor could I engage with her language which was at times conversational and other times abstrusely academic. The whole thing felt disjointed both at a macro and micro level: each essay was completely unrelated to the last, costing energy to get into; and within each essay there were deeply gripping pages followed by tedious ones.
But again: I'm not the target audience. Maybe it's targeted toward other Asian Americans, as catharsis or perhaps recognition of their experience? I learned of this book from [a:Mira Jacob|7273922|Mira Jacob|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391461840p2/7273922.jpg]'s Instagram feed. (Jacob writes in a way which I think reaches a broad audience.) I did learn from and relate to some portions of the book, enough to round up from 3.5 stars. But I just feel really sorry for Hong. Perhaps her suffering is what makes her a great poet/writer/artist; and perhaps her work will make the world a better place. I hope so.
The honesty and pointed self-awareness of Cathy's offering has me thinking twice, and three times more, about the full range of emotions I felt as I made my way through each essay. At once affirming and upsetting... While also, tensioning? Tensionizing? Tensyonado? Ewan ko nga! Nakaka loka talaga! I felt like I was stretching and squeezing past some parts, breath held. Though I'm not yet sure what all, exactly, I was distancing myself from, I'm sure the distance will shrink enough for me to pin it down, eventually. Part of it has to do with being Filipino-American, but not all, I think. And it leaves me considering what it means to live in true and honest relation with one other. So yes, more of this, please! Very very much more :)
