Explore the real-world places that appear in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Flushing, Queens, Bowery Poetry Club, MoMA PS1, Korean Community Services of New York, Hacienda Heights, Los Angeles and 8 more.
Main Street & Roosevelt Avenue — Hong family home
Flushing is where Cathy Park Hong grew up as a Korean American child in Queens. The neighborhood represents her foundational identity and the experiences of being an immigrant daughter navigating between Korean and American worlds. Hong reflects on her childhood here, the grocery stores, the Korean community, and the complex feelings of belonging and alienation that shaped her. The Asian American families in Flushing embody the minor feelings that pervade the collection—the low-grade anxiety and shame of not quite fitting anywhere.
Flushing has been a major hub for Korean, Chinese, and other Asian immigrants since the 1960s. By the 1980s-1990s when Hong was a child, it had become one of the largest Asian American communities in North America, with a thriving economy of Korean restaurants, shops, and cultural institutions.
Flushing remains one of the most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods in Queens, with a bustling Main Street filled with restaurants, bakeries, and shops serving a predominantly Asian population. It is a center of Asian American culture and commerce.
Visit: Flushing neighborhood (various cultural sites) (landmark)
308 East 3rd Street, Manhattan — Performance venue
The Bowery Poetry Club represents the East Village poetry and performance scene where Hong participated in readings and artistic activism. This venue embodies the nexus of Asian American voices, experimental poetry, and grassroots cultural resistance that Hong engaged with. The club became a space for expressing the complexities of race, identity, and belonging through performance. Hong's own work emerged from and contributed to this community of poets grappling with Asian American experience and representation.
The Bowery Poetry Club opened in 2002 as a non-profit venue dedicated to poetry, performance, and community. It became known for hosting diverse voices, including Asian American poets and performers challenging mainstream representations.
The Bowery Poetry Club closed permanently in 2015. The building at 308 East 3rd Street still stands and is currently occupied by other tenants.
22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City — Contemporary art museum
PS1 represents the contemporary art world and institutional spaces where Hong engages with Asian American artistic expression and critique. The museum embodies the tension between mainstream art institutions and marginalized perspectives. Hong reflects on how Asian American artists navigate these spaces, seeking visibility while confronting tokenism and erasure. PS1's commitment to experimental and diverse work mirrors the cultural interventions Hong advocates for in her essays.
MoMA PS1 was founded in 1971 as an alternative art space in a historic public school building in Long Island City. It became known for experimental art, artist residencies, and institutional critique before becoming affiliated with MoMA in 2000.
MoMA PS1 continues to operate as a leading contemporary art museum and PS1 Warm Up festival venue, hosting exhibitions, performances, and community programs. It remains a major cultural institution in Queens.
Visit: MoMA PS1 (museum)
36-14 Union Street, Flushing — Social services & community center
The Korean community service organizations that Hong references represent the infrastructure of immigrant support and cultural maintenance. These institutions embody both the solidarity of immigrant communities and the perpetuation of patriarchal structures, emotional repression, and assimilationist pressures. Hong grapples with how her community's survival mechanisms sometimes require silencing pain and shame, creating the minor feelings she examines.
Korean Community Services of New York was established in the 1970s to provide social services, language education, and cultural programs for Korean immigrants adjusting to American life. It became a crucial anchor institution in Flushing's Korean American community.
Korean Community Services continues to operate in Flushing, serving the Korean American population with counseling, education, language programs, and community events. It remains an active social service provider.
Visit: Korean Community Services of New York (historic site)
Rowland Heights vicinity — Asian American suburban community
Los Angeles represents another node in Hong's geographical and emotional mapping. The San Gabriel Valley's Asian American suburbs embody model minority mythology and suburban assimilation narratives that Hong interrogates. These communities appear as sites of both belonging and deep alienation, where Asian American families replicate the emotional structures that sustain 'minor feelings'—the quiet suffering, shame, and inarticulate anxiety beneath apparently successful immigrant lives.
Hacienda Heights and surrounding San Gabriel Valley communities became predominantly Asian American (particularly Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese) starting in the 1980s. These suburbs exemplified the spatial expression of post-1965 immigration patterns and became symbols of Asian American suburban success.
The San Gabriel Valley remains one of the most Asian American regions in the United States, with thriving immigrant communities, excellent schools, and robust ethnic commercial districts. It continues to be a center of Asian American suburban life and culture.
Visit: Hacienda Heights community (landmark)
Oakland & Berkeley — Asian American cultural activism
The Bay Area represents a crucial geography of Asian American activism and cultural resistance. Hong reflects on the history of Asian American political movements, from anti-war activism to contemporary racial justice work. This region embodies the intellectual and artistic communities that have shaped Asian American critique and consciousness. The Bay Area's legacy of radical organizing and multicultural solidarity appears as a counterpoint to the assimilationist pressures Hong experienced in immigrant family structures.
The Bay Area has been home to major Asian American movements since the 1960s, including the Anti-war movement, the Third World Liberation Front, and Asian American studies programs at UC Berkeley. It became a center for Asian American arts, activism, and intellectual life.
The Bay Area continues to be a hub for Asian American culture, activism, and intellectual work, with major universities, cultural institutions, and political organizations. Oakland and Berkeley remain centers of resistance and community organizing.
Visit: Bay Area cultural institutions and historic sites (landmark)
Center City — Hong's current residence
Philadelphia appears as Hong's current location, a place of relative anonymity and distance from her origins. The city represents a kind of middle ground in her geographical and psychological mapping—neither the immigrant neighborhoods of her childhood nor the avant-garde art scenes of New York, but a place where she writes and reflects. Philadelphia becomes the vantage point from which she observes and critiques the American racial landscape.
Philadelphia has a complex racial history as one of America's oldest cities, with significant African American, immigrant, and Latino communities. It has been a center of intellectual and artistic activity throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Philadelphia is a major cultural center with world-class museums, universities, theaters, and restaurants. Its Center City neighborhood is the vibrant urban core with galleries, bookstores, and cultural venues.
Visit: Philadelphia cultural district (landmark)
116th Street & Broadway, Manhattan — University attended by Hong
Columbia University represents Hong's entry into elite academic and artistic spaces, where she encountered both intellectual capital and deeper awareness of her marginalization. The university embodies institutional structures that simultaneously celebrate and tokenize Asian American scholars and artists. Hong reflects on the contradictions of accessing prestigious education while remaining subject to racism, exoticization, and the expectation to represent her racial community.
Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King's College and has been one of America's most prestigious institutions. Its Asian American student population grew significantly after 1965, particularly in the decades when Hong would have attended.
Columbia University remains one of the world's leading research institutions, with a diverse student body and strong programs in creative writing, ethnic studies, and American studies. Its campus spans much of Upper West Manhattan.
Visit: Columbia University (landmark)
Lower East Side — Downtown art and activist scene
The East Village represents the experimental poetry and performance scene that shaped Hong's artistic consciousness. This neighborhood embodied downtown Manhattan's legacy of artistic innovation, queer culture, punk aesthetics, and multicultural solidarity. Hong participated in readings, performances, and community events here that articulated Asian American identity and critique through experimental forms. The East Village offered a countercultural space distinct from mainstream institutions.
The Lower East Side/East Village has been home to successive waves of immigrants and artists since the 19th century. By the 1980s-1990s, it was a center of punk, performance art, queer culture, and grassroots activism before gentrification transformed it.
The East Village remains a vibrant neighborhood with historic theaters, galleries, bars, and cultural venues, though increasingly gentrified. It retains some of its countercultural character while becoming more upscale.
Visit: East Village historic district (landmark)
Mott Street & Pell Street — Immigrant ethnic enclave
Chinatown represents the visible ethnic geography of Asian American New York, a space of both cultural continuity and racialization. Hong reflects on how Asian American ethnic enclaves are marked as foreign, touristic, and subordinate within the American racial hierarchy. Chinatown embodies the structural conditions that produce minor feelings—the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of Asian Americans, the exoticization of immigrant culture, and the confinement of Asian Americans to particular geographic and economic spaces.
Chinatown became the first major Chinese immigrant enclave in America starting in the 1840s. By the 20th century, it was the center of Chinese American life on the East Coast, with distinct geography, economy, and culture shaped by exclusionary laws and white racism.
Chinatown remains a vibrant neighborhood with Chinese restaurants, bakeries, markets, and cultural institutions. It is a major tourist destination while continuing to serve as a home and commercial center for Chinese American and Asian immigrant communities.
Visit: Chinatown neighborhood (various historic sites) (landmark)
Battery Park, Manhattan — War memorial and national history
The Korean War represents crucial historical background to Hong's family narrative and the collective trauma of Korean Americans. Her parents' generation was shaped by the Korean War, which created the conditions for division, migration, and the psychic wounds that manifest as minor feelings. Hong grapples with how Cold War history, national memory, and individual family trauma intertwine in ways that are rarely acknowledged in dominant American narratives.
The Korean War (1950-1953) resulted in approximately 3 million deaths and the division of Korea into North and South. For Korean Americans, the war created diaspora, family separation, and lasting trauma. The memorial opened in Battery Park in 2006.
The Korean War Veterans Memorial in Battery Park honors those who served in the Korean War. It is a public space of remembrance and reflection on a historically understudied conflict in American public memory.
Visit: Korean War Veterans Memorial (monument)
46 Walker Street, Manhattan — Asian American theater company
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre represents institutionalized Asian American cultural production and the complexities of seeking visibility and representation within American theater. Hong engages with how Asian American artists navigate tokenism, stereotyping, and the pressure to represent the community. The theater embodies both the necessity and limitations of ethnic-specific cultural institutions within a white-dominated arts world.
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre was founded in 1977 by Filipino American playwright Tisa Chang as the first Asian American theater company in New York. It became a landmark institution for Asian American dramaturgy and performance.
Pan Asian Repertory Theatre continues to operate in Lower Manhattan, producing plays by and about Asian Americans. It remains an important venue for Asian American dramatic work and cultural expression.
Visit: Pan Asian Repertory Theatre (theater)
215 Centre Street, Manhattan — Ethnic museum
The Museum of Chinese in America represents institutionalized historical narratives about Asian Americans and the politics of representation and memory. Hong reflects on how museums preserve and frame ethnic history, what stories get told, and what forms of experience remain invisible or illegible within official archives. The museum embodies the tension between celebrating cultural heritage and critiquing the structural inequalities that shaped Chinese American experience.
The Museum of Chinese in America opened in 1980 to document and preserve Chinese American history. It moved to its current location in Chinatown in 2009 and has become a major repository of Chinese American historical artifacts and narratives.
The Museum of Chinese in America operates as a major cultural institution in Chinatown, with exhibitions, education programs, and archives documenting Chinese American experience. It is open to the public and serves as an important center for ethnic history.
Visit: Museum of Chinese in America (museum)
More by Cathy Park Hong: All Cathy Park Hong books
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