Cathy Park Hong Archive

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning’s Exploration of Solidarity

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Though published in 2020 before the advent of the pandemic and the racial unrest that marked the year, Cathy Park Hong’s collection of essays explores the complexities of Asian American identity in ways that speak to the conversations around racial identity and solidarity that continue into 2021.

Authority, Authenticity, and Representation

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Thinking about #ownvoices within the broader framework of literature suggests that we acknowledge where our representations come from and who controls them—and that we strive to rectify the distortions and erasures generated by centuries of marginalization by always paying attention to whose voices get to be heard.

Out with T.S. Eliot, and In with Cathy Park Hong: Poetry Criticism in the 21st Century

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The debate about whether Rupi Kaur’s poetry (and by extension, the whole genre dubbed “instapoetry”) is good or bad has apparently been revived. Whether that debate is actually useful in the terms it has set out for itself remains to be seen. Most often, it seems, when the poet

So Your Character Wants to Be a Historian

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There’s no easy way to actually quantify this, but it feels like more and more characters I see in books are historians of some kind – regardless of their status, amateur or professional, these are characters who do sleuthing work about the past, consciously or not.

Imagining the Anthropocene: Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire

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In the nineteenth century, Manifest Destiny cast pillage as a moral imperative. Its rallying cry re-ignited the American founding’s genocide and environmental destruction to fuel westward expansion. Cathy Park Hong’s sonorous triptych Engine Empire reshapes the Western’s tropes into a chilling interrogation of digitally facilitated detachment.

The Resistance Will Also Be Literary

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November has been a heavy month. The results of the U.S. elections came in; Leonard Cohen passed away; and on Sunday 13th, France commemorated the 1-year anniversary of the Paris attacks.

Just Suppose: Poetry for Fans of Speculative Fiction

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Robert Heinlein, the prolific author of Starship Troopers and other sci-fi works, coined the term “speculative fiction” in 1947. In the essay, Heinlein defines “speculative fiction” as “the story embodying the notion ‘Just suppose—’ or ‘What would happen if—’.” For Heinlein, this narrative hypothesis creates “a new framework for