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jive
https://www.goodreads.com/jivel
“Asian Americans inhabit a purgatorial status: neither white enough nor black enough, unmentioned in most conversations about racial identity. In the popular imagination, Asian Americans are all high-achieving professionals. But in reality, this is the most economically divided group in the country, a tenuous alliance of people with roots from South Asia to East Asia to the Pacific Islands, from tech millionaires to service industry laborers. How do we speak honestly about the Asian American condition—if such a thing exists?”
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
“Women are genuinely trapped at the intersection of capitalism and patriarchy—two systems that, at their extremes, ensure that individual success comes at the expense of collective morality. And yet there is enormous pleasure in individual success. It can feel like license and agency to approach an ideal, to find yourself—in a good picture, on your wedding day, in a flash of identical movement—exemplifying a prototype. There are rewards for succeeding under capitalism and patriarchy; there are rewards even for being willing to work on its terms. There are nothing but rewards, at the surface level. The trap looks beautiful. It’s well-lit. It welcomes you in.”
― Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
― Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
“Well-meaning friends never failed to warn me, if a white guy was attracted to me, that he probably had an Asian fetish. The result: I distrusted my desirousness. My sexuality was a pathology. If anyone non-Asian liked me, there was something wrong with him.”
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
“Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.”
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
“We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear. By not speaking up, we perpetuate the myth that our shame is caused by our repressive culture and the country we fled, whereas America has given us nothing but opportunity. The lie that Asians have it good is so insidious that even now as I write, I’m shadowed by doubt that I didn’t have it bad compared to others. but racial trauma is not a competitive sport. The problem is not that my childhood was exceptionally traumatic but that it was in fact rather typical. Most white Americans can only understand racial trauma as a spectacle.”
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
― Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
jive’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at jive’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
292 books
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77 friends
79 books
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6 friends
226 books
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36 friends
369 books
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18 friends
1,210 books
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231 friends
646 books
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28 friends
112 books
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83 friends
744 books
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51 friends
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