I’ve been trying to collect my thoughts on Julia Lee’s memoir, and I think the first place I can start is that I did like this more than Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings. I appreciated the more personal nature of Lee’s memoir, as well as the more-than-justified anger that permeated throughout. I think Lee telling her story and how she navigated various spaces was meaningful in contextualizing how she’s approaching her Asian American—specifically Korean American—identity. In addition, I especially liked the framing of thinking about Asian Americans’ place in racial discourse not as neither/nor but, rather, as both/and. I think it helped address the nuances of that in-between space that Asian Americans find themselves in when race is brought up in conversation.

Unfortunately, like Minor Feelings, Biting the Hand also ran into similar issues where the author occasionally conflated her lived experiences with other Asian Americans’ lived experiences. I don’t mean to turn this into a compare/contrast review, but I do think Lee did a relatively better job at recognizing the awkwardness of “Asian American” as a label, with how it tends to homogenize and oversimplify an enormous and diverse population. I also think the conflating didn’t happen nearly as much as it did in Minor Feelings, especially because Lee was a bit more intentional about this memoir being her story than anything. With that said, I think if she had explicitly stated at the start her positionality and how she’s approaching “Asian American,” the memoir would have really come together better. (A related side note, but I strongly feel that East Asian Americans especially need to be more cognizant of their tendencies to conflate their experiences with non-East Asian Americans and be very intentional about sharing how they’re understanding “Asian American” as a label.)

Ultimately, I didn’t hate this memoir and really appreciated the insights Lee brought, but I also didn’t quite love it as much as others seem to have. I found myself wanting a little more from what was discussed (though, what, exactly, I’m still not sure). I’ll be thinking about this book for a bit, either way.