The Aurora Public Library District (APLD) is proud to be a partner with many Chicago area libraries to welcome poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong, to the Aurora community at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4. Cathy Park Hong is the poetry editor of the New Republic and is a full professor at Rutgers-Newark University. The subject of this conversation is her award-winning collection, Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning, which explores her experiences of racism as an Asian-American woman and connects her lived reality with racial injustice on the scale of institutions and structures.
Published in 2020, this book gathers essays in dialogue around Asian consciousness in the United States by highlighting the ways in which white supremacist culture uniquely silences and erases Asian identities. Time Magazine featured Minor Feelings as one of the best books of 2020 and referred to Hong as, “an energetic and necessary voice in the dialogue surrounding racism in the U.S.”
The author recently had been selected for Time Magazine’s top 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. She is the author of the 2012 collection of poems, Engine Empire, and Dance Dance Revolution, published in 2007 and selected by American poet Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Hong is the recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
In Minor Feelings, Hong observes, “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.”
Silence, for Hong, has operated as one of the tools of American racism, wielded with precision against those of Asian descent to become intertwined with one’s sense of culture and identity. The racist process of internalization doubles down on this silence to once again reinforce its own subjugating power. Ultimately, silence becomes the evidence and justification for continued racism.
APLD events and program coordinator, Krista Danis, stated, “As community leaders, libraries are obligated to make space for the untold stories. F. Willis Johnson recently observed as keynote speaker to the Study Circles Illinois Fall Kickoff Event at the Library on Tuesday, Oct. 12, the person telling the story will determine the outcomes. The endings can change based on the narrator. On November 4, we hope to offer an opportunity to hear a new perspective, one that has not been heard or whose ending might not have been told.”
Hong will be in conversation with Chicago journalist Monica Eng, a reporter for Axios. Eng worked at Chicago’s WBEZ-AM for eight years as the station’s “Curious City” reporter, and spent 16 years as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
Thank you to the independent bookstores that are supporting this event through online sales, including Bookshop, Barbara’s Bookstore, The Book Bin, and The Book Stall.
The 21 libraries which have worked together to make this possible are as follows: Arlington Heights Memorial Library, Aurora Public Library District, Barrington Area Library, Clarendon Hills Public Library, Cook Memorial Public Library District, Deerfield Public Library, Downers Grove Public Library, Forest Park Public Library, Glencoe Public Library, Highland Park Public Library, Homer Township Public Library District, Indian Trails Public Library District, Lake Villa District Library, Mount Prospect Public Library, Prospect Heights Public Library District, Schaumburg Township Library District, Skokie Public Library, Wilmette Public Library, and Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District
This event will be presented virtually on Zoom with closed-captioning available. Please register to receive your exclusive link to join.