Quotes About Heritage

The weight of the world comes largely from its past.

You leave the place you're from, you have to. But you also need to have it stay in you for a long time. It is your center.

Nuestros mecanismos de emparejamiento son los fósiles vivientes que nos indican lo que somos y de dónde venimos.

Quienes no se emparejan no se convierten en antepasados. Cada ser humano, por lo tanto, desciende de una línea larga e ininterrumpida de otros que se emparejaron con éxito a lo largo de millones de años. Si uno de nuestros antepasados no hubiera conseguido salvar los complejos obstáculos que supone el emparejamiento, no estaríamos vivos para reflexionar sobre tales hechos improbables.

Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready — so who was she to advise me on anything?

Here was a person for whom the word pen had two syllables. Her people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready—so who was she to advise me on anything?

mater regis ('queen mother')

True or not, it's important to have stories ? they are what give us the right to walk the earth and have a name.

Aquí lo que nos importa es preservar las raíces, que los que vengan encuentren el origen, la antigüedad.

His "wickedly selfish" Americans loved to celebrate their "own heritage, and on this condition are content to see others crushed in our midst.

Well the nation may forget; it may shut its eyes to the past, but the colored people of this country are bound to keep fresh a memory of the past till justice shall be done them in the present."39

Genealogical trees do not flourish among slaves. —FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1855

All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.

Colonialism is a terrible bane for a people upon whom it is imposed, but a blessing for a language.

In a gourd that had been handed down for three centuries, a flower that would fade in a morning.

Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, said Hifan proudly. Irie inhaled. Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, repeated Millat, impressed. That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu arse sound to it. Irie frowned. KEVIN? We are aware, said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, that we have an acronym problem.

Because this is the other thing about immigrants ('fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.

We were to remember that we were beautiful, intelligent, capable, kings and queens, in possession of a history, in possession of a culture, in possession of ourselves, and yet the more she filled the room with this effortful light, the clearer the sense I got of the shape and proportions of the huge shadow that must, after all, hang over us. One

She was never home. Irie was stuck between a rock and a hard place, like Ireland, like Israel, like India.

A clear and unified voice. In that context, this business of being biracial, of being half black and half white, is awkward.

A different kind of history from my mother's, the kind that is barely written down—that is felt.