Held a special global leader lecture with Cathy Park Hong, the author of <Minor Feelings>
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- Writer 커뮤니케이션팀
- 보도일자 2022-07-14
On Monday, June 27, Sookmyung Women’s University invited poet and writer Cathy Park Hong for a special lecture on her book “Minor Feelings.”
This special lecture was organized as the final lineup of “What＇s the next: Special Lecture on Relay Vision by 15 Global Leaders.” which Sookmyung Women’s University has been conducting since last year. A total of 120 students participated online and offline, and Professor Sung-hee Yook of the School of English was in charge of conducting the conversation.
Cathy Park Hong is a Korean-American poet and writer who was selected as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by the weekly newsmagazine Time in 2021. She won the Pushcart Prize for her first collection of poems, “Translating Mo＇um”, and her second collection of poems, “Dance Dance Revolution”, won the Barnard Women Poets Prize. “Minor Feelings”, which was the subject of the special lecture, is an essay about Asian discrimination in American society, and became a New York Times bestseller in the field of nonfiction. This work was selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the Nonfiction category, and then won the National Book Critics Circle Awards (autobiography category) and the American Book Award. The author is also currently a professor of creative writing at Rutgers University Graduate School of Arts.
In a special lecture on this day, Cathy Park Hong started with an explanation of the book “Minor Feelings” and talked about what minority groups feel in society and the reasons behind these feelings, including the American society she experienced as a Korean-American. She stated that people should not accept the problem of social structure that makes them feel alienated as their own problem.
She talked about what can be done to escape the inherent discrimination consciousness and said, “It is important to be conscious, empathize, and have an open mind,” and “you should also read about things outside of your own experience.” In addition, the author emphasized that it is important to know what creates division in society, and that we should not be silent about structural discrimination by saying, “Do not moderate your anger.”
The special lecture, which lasted about an hour, ended with a question and answer time. A student who participated in the special lecture said, “Through your stories, I learned the value of humanities in response to absurdity and inequality in a rapidly changing society.”
Interviewed by: Class of ‘20 Sookmyung Correspondent So-hyun Ahn (School of English, ‘20)
Edited by: Communication Team