WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2021 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION 2021 A New York Times Top Book of 2020 Chosen as a Guardian Book of 2020 A BBC Culture Best Books of 2020 Nominated for Good Reads Books of 2020 One of Time's Must-Read Books of 2020 'Unputdownable ... Hong's razor-sharp, provocative prose will linger long after you put Minor Feelings down' - AnOther, Books You Should Read This Year 'A fearless work of creative non-fiction about racism in cultural pursuits by an award-winning poet and essayist' - Asia House 'Brilliant, penetrating and unforgettable, Minor Feelings is what was missing on our shelf of classics ... To read this book is to become more human' - Claudia Rankine author of Citizen 'Hong says the book was 'a dare to herself', and she makes good on it: by writing into the heart of her own discomfort, she emerges with a reckoning destined to be a classic' - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts What happens when an immigrant believes the lies they're told about their own racial identity? For Cathy Park Hong, they experience the shame and difficulty of "minor feelings". The daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up in America steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these "minor feelings" occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality. With sly humour and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and artmaking, and to family and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche - and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation's diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious. This anxiety has helped to create the Tea Party movement, with its call to "take our country back." By means of a racialized nostalgia for a mythological past, the Right is enlisting fearful whites into its campaign for reactionary social and economic policies. In urgent response, Tim Wise has penned his most pointed and provocative work to date. Employing the form of direct personal address, he points a finger at whites' race-based self-delusion, explaining how such an agenda will only do harm to the nation's people, including most whites. In no uncertain terms, he argues that the hope for survival of American democracy lies in the embrace of our multicultural past, present and future. "Sparing neither family nor self…he considers how the deck has always been stacked in his and other white people's favor…His candor is invigorating."—Publishers Weekly "One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation."—Michael Eric Dyson "Tim Wise has written another blockbuster! Dear White America is a cogent analysis of the problems of race and inequality as well as a plea for those who harbor views about race and racism to modify and indeed eliminate them. While the book's title addresses white people, this is really a book for anyone who is concerned about eliminating the issue of racial disparity in our society. This is must read and a good read."—Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. "Tim Wise is an American hero in the truest sense of the term—he tells the truth, no matter how inconvenient that truth might be. Dear White America is a desperately needed response to the insidious mythology that pretends whites are oppressed and people of color unduly privileged."—David Sirota, syndicated columnist, radio host, author of Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now

“A strident critique of critical race theory” that examines how policies of diversity and inclusion have ill-served Asian Americans (Kirkus Reviews). From a journalist on the frontlines of the Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard case comes a probing examination of affirmative action, the false narrative of American meritocracy, and the attack on Asian American excellence with its far-reaching implications—from seedy test-prep centers to gleaming gifted-and-talented magnet schools, to top colleges and elite business, media, and political positions across America. Even in the midst of a nationwide surge of bias and incidents against them, Asians from coast to coast have quietly assumed mastery of the nation’s technical and intellectual machinery and become essential American workers. Yet, they’ve been forced to do so in the face of policy proposals—written in the name of diversity—excluding them from the upper ranks of the elite. In An Inconvenient Minority, journalist Kenny Xu traces elite America’s longstanding unease about a minority potentially upending them. Leftist agendas, such as eliminating standardized testing, doling out racial advantages to “preferred” minorities, and lumping Asians into “privileged” categories despite their deprived historical experiences have spurred Asian Americans to act. Going beyond the Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard case, Xu unearths the skewed logic rippling countrywide, from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s attempted makeover of New York City’s Specialized School programs to the battle over “diversity” quotas in Google’s and Facebook’s progressive epicenters, to the rise of Asian American activism in response to unfair perceptions and admission practices. Asian Americans’ time is now, as they increase their direct action and amplify their voices in the face of mounting anti-Asian attacks. An Inconvenient Minority chronicles the political and economic repression and renaissance of a long ignored racial identity group—and how they are central to reversing America’s cultural decline and preserving the dynamism of the free world. Praise for An Inconvenient Minority “Contending that the social advancement of ‘the Asian American community’ in spite of historic discrimination ‘directly challenge[s] the Leftist narrative of minority victimhood,’ Xu claims that Asian Americans have been left out of conversations about ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ because they suffer from persistent stereotypes and lack the kind of ‘cultural capital’ necessary to make their struggles visible to the mainstream. . . . Xu raises intriguing questions about the place of Asian Americans in U.S. society.” —Publishers Weekly

From a journalist on the frontlines of the Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard case comes a probing examination of affirmative action, the false narrative of American meritocracy, and the attack on Asian American excellence with its far-reaching implications--from seedy test-prep centers to gleaming gifted-and-talented magnet schools, to top colleges and elite business, media, and political positions across America The Asian American minority, transcending its impoverished history, has quietly assumed mastery of the nation's technical and intellectual machinery and become essential to the workforce that makes modern American life possible. Yet, they've been forced to do so in the face of policy proposals--written in the name of diversity--that serve to exclude them from the upper ranks of the elite. In An Inconvenient Minority, journalist Kenny Xu, who has covered the sensational Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) v. Harvard case since its inception, traces White America's longstanding unease about a minority potentially upending them in the race for group status. Their policy proposals, such as eliminating standardized testing, doling out racial preferences to non-Asian minorities, inflaming anti-Asian stereotypes, and lumping Asians into "privileged" categories despite their deprived historical experiences have forced Asian Americans to fight back--a battle given a boots-on-the-ground perspective here. Going beyond the Harvard case, Xu unearths the skewed logic that has had ripple effects throughout the US, from Governor Bill de Blasio's attempted makeover of the New York City Specialized School programs to the battle over diversity quotas in Google's and Facebook's progressive epicenters, to the rise of Asian American political activism in response to unfair perceptions and admission practices. For too long, Asian Americans have stood in the shadows, operating the machinery in the back. But their time is now. An Inconvenient Minority chronicles the political and economic repression and renaissance of a long ignored racial identity group--and how they are central to reversing America's cultural decline and preserving the dynamism of the free world.

Critical Race Theory, like most ideologies before it, promises an earthly paradise premised on ceaseless revolution, but instead of delivering on this promise, it produces a terrestrial hell echoing the inner nihilism of modern life. Contemporary social justice movements, just like progressivism, the New Deal, and post-Civil War Southern Democrats, place Westerners in bondage rather than delivering on the promise of unlimited freedom. Requiem for Reality responds to the widening pendulum shifts of our age. These developments consume and incense the nation. These shifts offer a bewildering set of claims grounded in the presumption that race and other forms of human identity explain all forms of disparity and inequality. Against such claims, it is crucial to distinguish between a development narrative and a bias narrative for the purpose of explaining ethnic disparity. The development narrative is grounded in data that often deliver unwelcome facts. The facts show that Asian Americans, as well as West Indian blacks, often do better than white Americans in schooling, per capita income, and crime rates. Indeed, Syrian Americans, Korean Americans, Indonesian Americans, Taiwanese Americans, and Filipino Americans experience significantly higher median household incomes than whites and higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. Oblivious to such facts, the bias narrative, on the other hand, grounds itself in the “white privilege” thesis suggesting that only race matters. Surfacing from the toxic pit of ideology, the bias narrative emphasizes the racist claim that African Americans are the only ethnic group in the world who cannot succeed under less-than-ideal conditions. Separated from important facts, this narrative often substitutes absolute Neo-pagan certainties originating in a make-believe world for commonplace notions of truth and reality. As such, the “white privilege” thesis, rather than improving the conditions of African Americans and others, offers a utopian dream that threatens to become a national nightmare. The urgent pursuit of utopia reflects trends that are largely anthropological, sociological, and more spiritual than political. Responding to these developments, which have given rise to victimhood claims within gender and transgender categories will require more than argumentation, rational analysis, superior logic, or even the inauguration of a Hanging Judge. It will require courage because otherwise, Chairman Mao’s forecast, stating that there is a great disorder under heaven and the situation is excellent, may come true here just like it has already come true for China.

Scholars of history, law, theology and anthropology critically revisit the history of human rights.