PositiveNPR[A] deep dive ... Admirable in the breadth and depth of its research, and edifying in presenting groups like the Wodaabe tribe in Chad and Iranian women ... Hankir\'s personal investment in this sophomore book is tangible, and helps to bring the reader along. Eyeliner is at its best when the author infuses the cultural history with her personal history as a British Lebanese wearer of eyeliner who has spent considerable time perfecting its application ... Engaging profiles ... How should the reader understand the larger story about communicating our identities and desires? How do they reconcile the paradoxical quality of makeup — the way it\'s simultaneously subversive and mainstream, capitalist and collectivist? Having guided us through an impressive, rigorously researched, winding path through centuries and over continents, Hankir ultimately leaves it up to us to decide what we do with the wealth of knowledge gathered along the way.
Cathy Park Hong
PositiveNPRHong\'s lived experience schooled her in the pain of being a nonwhite American. She summoned it and added a layer of rich research and critical analysis to school the rest of us on that perspective ... what Hong makes clear in Minor Feelings is the trauma of our parents or grandparents winds up written in us one way or another, and perhaps in our collective shame, irrespective of our parents\' intentions ... For non-art history majors, parts of the book may feel too theoretical or inaccessible since Hong, a decorated poet, has clearly spent her adult life in the shorthand of other creatives. And a sojourn into her time at Oberlin College left me unsatisfied, because I kept wondering, wait, what really happened to a key character? ... But ultimately, Minor Feelings is a major reckoning, pulling no punches as the author uses her life\'s flashpoints to give voice to a wider Asian American experience, one with cascading consequence ... Hong is naming the pain. And that\'s something.
