At a loss for words with the rise in hate-crimes against Asian Americans since this pandemic began. I've found the words of Cathy Park Hong, from her collection of Essays, Minor Feelings- truly healing. The rise around the world of hate crimes against people of Asian descent is heartbreaking. I will never fully understand the psychology of someone behind someone who commits an atrocity, a murder bc of the pigment in someone's skin or the shape of their eyes. It takes someone deeply broken, unformed and truly sick. Hope her words help those of you with very heavy heavy hearts.
“The problem with silence is that it can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplified, takes on a life outside our intentions, in that silence can get misread as indifference, or avoidance, or even shame, and eventually this silence passes over into forgetting.”
An important read for any American. Not just those of us who have lived with fear for our own or a family member’s safety… simply bc we are more deeply pigmented. Check out more in Our Journal on the site.
“Minor Feelings is a major reckoning, pulling no punches as the author uses her life’s flashpoints to give voice to a wider Asian American experience, one with cascading consequences.”—NPR
Illustrations above of the murdered Vicha Ratanapakdee & victim Noel Quintana by Jonathan D. Chang.