> the grief the grief the grief the grief
You're tuning into Cheers, a newsletter made by Tiffany Xie. This week: minor feelings, bewilderment theory, lemon snacking cake, and writing anxiety.
Hello friend,
> Still processing Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings:
“In the future, White supremacy will no longer need White people,” the artist Lorraine O’Grady said in 2018, a prognosis that seemed, at least on the surface, to counter what James Baldwin said fifty years ago, which is that “the White man’s sun has set.” Which is it then? What prediction will hold? As an Asian American, I felt emboldened by Baldwin but haunted and implicated by O’Grady. I heard the ring of truth in her comment, which gave me added urgency to finish this book. Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be anti-Black and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise.
> When I first heard the idea that Asians are next in line to become White, I thought it was ludicrous, merely clickbait, a hyperbolic interpretation of Asians as adjacent to Whiteness. Even so, I found the idea unsettling, and Hong untangles that unsettled feeling. I wish that I could do this also, give a shape to my amorphous feelings, complicate them. Reading the book, I felt like I had duct tape over my mouth and Hong ripped it off. I want to write in a way that breaks the silence of someone else’s world.
> The way that Minor Feelings references literary theory makes me want to read theory again. I’m not very patient with dense writing, but the way that Hong uses theory for meaning making is exciting, interwoven with personal anecdotes and artwork.
> I’m not really sure what constitutes theory. Broadly, I think of theory as ideas that offer frameworks for understanding the world. Theory to me is a series of glasses that I keep in a case. I switch the lenses out to see differently.
> I’m thinking again of Fanny Howe’s lecture on bewilderment:
Bewilderment is an enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability. It cracks open the dialectic and sees myriads all at once.
> “An enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconciliability.” What does that mean? I don’t know. I love it. I picture a landslide moving backwards, each rock fitting itself back onto an unmarked cliff.
> I baked Melissa Clark’s lemon snacking cake with coconut glaze. It tastes just like the Archway Frosty Lemon cookies I loved when I was younger.
> I don’t want to be writing right now and I feel guilty for this, given that I had big plans for writing this fall, for building the practice of writing. Instead I bake and lay on the carpet and look for jobs. I find other things to worry about and tell myself that writing is selfish, that it’s not so important. I waver between treating writing as a luxury and as a necessity.
> “Obligations 2” by Layli Long Soldier:
As we
embrace resist
the future the present the past
we work we struggle we begin we fail
to understand to find to unbraid to accept to question
the grief the grief the grief the grief
we shift we wield we bury
into light as ash
across our faces
> A loss for words brought to you by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
Cheers,
Tiffany