My book “The Minority Experience” has arrived!
(If you’d like to order The Minority Experience, you can do that here: https://www.adrianpei.com/the-minority-experience)
Look what just arrived in the mail! Some authors will say there’s nothing quite like the feeling of holding a book in your hands when it first arrives from the warehouse. As for me, my emotions are gratitude and peace. Here’s a little backstory behind the book that might give you a little window into the process for me:
This book (The Minority Experience: Navigating Emotional and Organizational Realities) started out as a kind of series of journal entries for me. After ten years working in ethnic and crosscultural leadership development, I simply wanted to process my biggest challenges and learnings. So I wrote about my experiences in as raw and vulnerable a way as possible… I didn’t hold anything back! I also decided to reach out to people with whom I still felt unresolved in terms of any past tensions or unspoken feelings. Most of all, I wanted to face myself in the fullness of who I am as a minority, as an Asian American man – in the good and bad, the confident and insecure, the incomplete and beautiful parts of my culture and journey.
It wasn’t easy to do all this, and it was even harder to share them with the world! But as I was holding my book, I do feel that sense of gratitude and peace.
I feel peace in knowing that I haven’t held anything back. It can be scary for minorities to be vulnerable, but I feel it’s the main way others can truly get to know and love us for who we really are. That’s why I’m so grateful that so many authors of color are writing books and sharing their stories. I’m grateful for InterVarsity Press, who seeks not just the most well-known or established voices, but minorities who operate more in the margins, or whom others might overlook.
I’m also grateful for the many friends, advocates, and allies who have supported this journey along the way. God sees you, and I won’t forget you and what you’ve done.
Finally, as I hold this book in my hands, I feel peace knowing that there’s so much in this life that isn’t truly in our control, and in our hands. I pray that this book would be an encouragement outside of what I can see and control, especially in the margins of society where nobody may be able to notice or document. May it truly honor those who live the minority experience every day.
