Quotes About Heritage

I come from a long line of generations!

He's asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black? We've been here two hundred years. The first Chinese came in 1815. Germans and Dutch and Irish and Italians who came at the turn of the twentieth century. They're Americans. (points at himself) Why doesn't this face register as American? Is it because we make the story too complicated?

because the idea was you came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived. You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

And you think: no. It won't be somewhere else. It will be here, again, in Chinatown, next year, same place. To be yellow in America. A special guest star, forever the guest.

Once that gets going, doors start opening until they're all open, the whole building buzzing until sunrise, as if nothing matters because nothing does matter because the idea was you came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived. You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

After two centuries here, why are we still not Americans? Why do we keep falling out of the story?

Maybe it's the dream of the open highway. The romantic myth of the West. A reminder that these funny little Orientals have actually been Americans longer than you have.

I learned that when one of them dies, the Irish comes out of the rest of them whether they are Irish or not. A firefighter is Irish by culture even if he is a black man, and there were plenty of them here. The firehouse is one of the few places in Detroit that is integrated at all. The blacks run the department, but its soul will always be Irish.

Hemos dejado atrás el concepto feudalista de que el intelecto es una prerrogativa de clase social, que la inteligencia es una cosa de herencia y del entorno;

I think people should look at learning about Native American history the same as visiting Washington, D.C., and seeing the monuments there. It's all part of the package.

Our parents are the primal source. We make our own lives, but our origin stories are theirs. They go back with us to the beginning of time.

One thing I never forgot from my Latin class is that a language that is descended from another language is called a daughter language. It was the beginning of the next era of my life, like this is of yours.

The power of blood, Charlie thought, and there was no small degree of pride in the thought. No matter what else you do in this life, no matter where you go, what you profess to believe, you can't escape the power of blood.

I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.

Tiger father begets tiger son.

Clever father, clever daughter; clever mother, clever son.

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage.

Tea is the symbol of and antidote to civilization.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."

America is not just a country, but a way of life.

The Fourth of July, when we get to play our favorite American guessing game — fireworks or gunshots?

The United States is the only country with a known birthday. All the rest began, they know not when, and grew into power, they know not how.... There is no "Republican," no "Democrat," on the Fourth of July, — all are Americans.

My country 't is of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrim's pride, From every mountain side Let freedom ring...