How is it that it took the confluence of a global pandemic and the rapid escalation of anti-Asian hate to finally bring community conversations about the mental health of Asian Americans into the open? Historical and Contemporary Context “This is the first time we’re talking about race and mental health.”

Yet, what has struck me the most – across various workshops, panels, addresses, and discussions about Asian American mental health that I’ve conducted with students, parents, educators, business leaders, and corporate workers in the past two years – is the recurrent remark: Whereas our family’s middle-class status largely protected us from economic insecurities and a lack of educational opportunities, I grew up with a floating sense of racial discomfort – what the poet Cathy Park Hong so aptly describes as “ minor feelings.” I discovered in college that there was a burgeoning field of Asian American psychology and I’ve made a career out of scholarship and teaching about how Asian American experiences are shaped by immigration, race, and family contexts. My family immigrated from Japan to the United States in the late 1970s to follow my late father’s “American dream” as an engineering professor. As a scholar who specializes in Asian American mental health, never has my expertise been called into such demand. The unrelenting news of violence and hate incidents against Asian Americans, especially here in New York City, on top of the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, has brought the mental health concerns of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) into the foreground.

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