Introduction to The Special Issue on the Psychoanalytic Exploration of Asian American Experiences

As of 2025, there are 25.8 million Asian Americans in the United States, accounting for nearly 8% of the total population (USA Facts, ). While the Asian American population is the fastest-growing racial minority group in the United States (Pew Research Center, ), they remain largely unknown to Americans in the American consciousness. Recent surveys, asking 5,000 American adults to name one famous Asian American, yielded a quarter of respondents unable to do so (The Asian American Foundation, ). When people were able to name them, the two most popular names, for 3 consecutive years from 2021 to 2023, were Jackie Chan (who is not American) and Bruce Lee (who passed away 50 years ago). Kamala Harris was the third most popular, followed by Lucy Liu. After Kamala Harris, no South Asians were listed among the top 20 names (The Asian American Foundation, ).

The Korean American poet Cathy Park Hong (2020), in her book Minor Feelings, insightfully summarizes the Asian American experience of invisibility by comparing it with a collection of minor feelings that are too trivial to be taken seriously. It is thought that this predicament is in part due to the American racial dynamic dominated by Black-White racial tensions rooted in the slavery of Black people and its damaging, traumatic legacy in the present day, leaving little room for consideration of the experiences of non-Black people of color. However, the dominance

of the Black-White racial discourse alongside the Model Minority ster