Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong is the author of the essay collection. Hong is the daughter of Korean parents, who immigrated to the United States shortly after the Korean War. Hong's parents initially moved to Pennsylvania, where Hong's father began a business as a mechanic. The couple later moved to L.A., where Hong was born. Hong's father's hard work eventually allowed the family to move out of Koreatown, and into a wealthy, predominantly white, neighborhood.

As a young girl, Hong was often lonely. She found comfort in reading and writing. The older she became, however, the more she felt excluded from literary representations of adolescence. Her education particularly excluded references to her experience as the child of immigrant parents. However, Hong was frustrated by her father's obsession with racial issues. She felt desperate to escape her family. When she moved to Ohio to study visual art...