Quotes About Heritage

Spiritually, I'm Jewish.

I really got back to my New Orleans roots - my grandfather played with Fats Domino. We had to leave after Katrina, but I feel like, spiritually, I'm back there.

I learned Punjabi before I learned English in spite of the fact that I was born in Canada.

I am not making spiteful assertions now but merely stating the facts-that, for instance, among Hungarian generals there is such a considerable percentage of men of German origin, who of course had, in most cases, to alter their names if they wanted to get anywhere.

The South is like my favorite pair of blue jeans. It's shrunk some, faded a bit, got a few holes in it. it just might split at the seams. It doesn't look much like it used to, but it's more comfortable, and there's probably a lot of wear left in it.

Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, 'What's your background?' and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor. Howard Jacobson's 'The Finkler Question' forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.

You can never split yourself from the family you were born into.

I can proudly say that I didn't spoil my father's name.

There is so much to explore in Delhi. The city has many interesting experiences in terms of places and foods to offer. There are so many options that one is usually spoilt for choice.

My grandfather spoke fluent Spanish and I have family members who speak fluent Spanish.

If anything, I've thought of myself as Scandinavian. Particularly, Danish. We spoke English at home.

My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.

I spoke English at school and Spanish at home, and I'm always eating Dominican food, listening to Dominican music.

I spoke in Tamil at home and ate dosa and idli.

Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.

When I was a boy, cricket was very, very English. Anyone who spoke English and anyone from a big town could play. And that was it.

I probably spoke Spanish growing up about 95 percent of the time.

I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.

I spoke Franglais growing up.

I am an American, but a sense of otherness was part of my growing up. I spoke Norwegian before I spoke English. My mother is Norwegian.

When I was growing up, we spoke Egyptian, we ate Egyptian food, we had other Egyptian friends. It was my father's preference.

Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.

Asian-Americans, we're not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.

Nobody in my school knew who Bill Monroe was, or Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and barely Johnny Cash. Nobody spoke that language. I proceeded to get myself kicked out.