Quotes About Heritage

Those Genes Could Have Been Mine

I am not an Englishman, nor are you. Nor can we ever be, regardless of our foxtrots, our straight bats, our Jolly Goods and I Says. No more the Anglicized Percy, I. I am now Taimur Hind.

an Indian, introducing the English to the history of India, which was his history and not theirs. It was a surprising thought, and something in it made him uneasy. He had thought the world would change around him but his own life would stay unaffected. 'India

My history is your picnic ground,

Why have the English remained so English?

But when the English leave, they'll be going home.

I left Bulgaria when I was a seventeen-year-old East European, and I am now, by all appearances, a 32-year-old 'global soul'. But everybody needs a borrowed 'us' from time to time, even a global soul. And after half a lifetime and several other countries, the Bulgarian 'us' is still the only honest one I have.

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.

Since I was a very small child, I've had a kind of reverence for the past, and I felt a very intimate connection with it.

A few small changes in your DNA can turn your eyes blue, make you lactose intolerant or put some curl in your hair.

I think growing up, I didn't ever attempt to define my Koreanness. It was just this intrinsic part of me.

I have introduced Filipino culture to the world.

I grew up in rural Alabama, and some of my older family members used to eat red clay dirt. As a kid, I was introduced to it.

I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.

My introduction to the United States was plantations in Louisiana. It was delightful.

Hebrew School was my first introduction to real feminism. I remember that much more than I remember any kind of actual religious teaching.

Cultural appropriation is a big problem, but the thing is, I didn't invent my life. I really lived in Africa.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

One thing I am sure about Manchester is that people are proud of their history. They are proud of their football, music, the industrial revolution, and all the amazing things that were invented here.

The invention of the African American, or the Haitian or Jamaican, is a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade.

I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in.

It's important to tell the story you're telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity - or it might not.

My grandfather, who's still alive, has always been involved in art, antiques, and things like that. I think I learned so much from him.

My whole family's been involved with music, and it's been so since the minstrel days.