Spotlight: Cathy Park Hong
The boundaries between different literary genres are realms yet to be fully
explored and understood, as expected of the ever-shifting nature of “this living
art.” Korean American poet, author, and professor, Cathy Park Hong is a
prominent figure of avant-garde writing in terms of her advocacy and identity.
She was born on August 7th, 1976, in Los Angeles, California to Korean parents.
Hong graduated from Oberlin College and obtained her MFA from the Iowa
Writer’s Workshop. She now teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and
is a poetry editor for the New Republic. Recognition of her work includes being
named on the Time Top 100 List for her writing and advocacy, the 2018
Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in poetry, the 2020 National Book Critics
Circle Award, and the Barnard New Women Poets Prize.
“Hong is brutally self-aware and embraces her anger as
she captures how she’s struggled to make sense
of her identity.” –TIME
Hong’s poetry and prose have been featured in the New York Times, The
Guardian, The Republic, Paris Review, and POETRY Magazine. Among her most
acclaimed works are Minor Feelings, Translating Mo’um, and Dance Dance
Revolution. These works layer various disciplines of writing from science fiction
to nineteenth century romantic rhetoric. In both writing styles and life, Hong
looks to expand upon the alternate ways we sojourn within an “existing real”.
Alongside this mindset, Hong believes that the process of writing itself can be
coalitional in the sense of amplifying other’s experiences among her own
perspectives when speaking for minority communities. According to Hong, her
pieces, such as Minor Feelings, beg ever-pressing questions of Asian American
identity: “‘Who is us?’ As Jeff Chang voices, and Hong reiterates, ‘I want to love
us, but I don’t know who is us.’”