Quotes About Identity

People change, you know. When you leave your country, you are like a plant taken out of soil. Some people turn hard, they can't flower again.

You" or "Your" never meant one of us. When we replied to a question, no one cared which of us had spoken; an answer from one was an answer for The Twins.

The Arabs had the dry, musty smell of a grain cellar; the Asians contributed the ginger and garlic; and from the whites came the odor of a milk-soaked bib.

La clave de vuestra felicidad es aceptar vuestras babuchas, lo que sois, vuestro aspecto, a vuestra familia, las dotes que tenéis y las que no tenéis. Si seguís repitiendo que vuestras babuchas no son vuestras, moriréis buscando y amargados, creyendo siempre que os habían prometido más. «No sólo se convierten en nuestro destino nuestras acciones, sino también nuestras omisiones.»

is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

Digby is struck by the contrast: an enclave for Anglo-Indians that excludes natives, yet whose inhabitants are themselves excluded by the ruling race with whom they align. But then, he's in the same spot. Digby Kilgour: oppressed in Glasgow; oppressor here. The thought depresses him.

But then my poor sons would have to be educated alongside Anglo-Indians. They'd have a chee-chee accent like their mother and be called 'fifteen annas' behind their backs, even if they were not Anglo-Indians." There were sixteen annas to a rupee, and to be a Celeste was to be one short.

to be part of the fabric instead of a thread torn from the whole.

By the time they return to the lodge in the late afternoon, they've seen so many white men—sa'ippus—and even white women, that Baby Mol no longer wants to touch them to see if the color comes off.

group thinks the other is inferior by birth, by skin color, by history. Inferior, and therefore deserving less. My father was no slave. He was beloved here. But he was never your equal so he wasn't rewarded as one.

I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself.

Today in Cuba, a small number of people proudly claim Taíno identity.

When the friar answered that the good ones did, Hatuey at once answered that he preferred hell, "so as not to be where Spaniards were.

I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.

What I didn't like was how people talked to me now that I was no longer single; they were nicer. Men who never looked at me would start up a conversation, like I was suddenly some safer form of fire.

My mother's psychic says, everyone essentially wants the same thing as everyone else, a sense of belonging, a coming home.

I imagine the insides of myself sometimes-- part female, part male, part terrible dragon.

someone I could hold up to my ear and hear the ocean, something I could say my name into, and have it returned in the inky waves.

I wanted to be a hummingbird. It made sense to long for rapid wings and the ability to hover always— to be Huitzilopochtli taming my snakes. Sometimes though, the thought exhausts me and I want to be a slow horse, a tennis shoe.

It's been a long time since I've wanted to die, it makes me feel like taking off my skin suit and seeing how my light flies all on its own, neon and bouncy like a wannabe star.

It wasn't until later, when I moved in with him and stood outside on our patchy imperfect lawn, that I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.

a clean honesty about our otherness that feels not like the moral but the story.

It's been a long time since I wanted to die, it makes me feel like taking off my skin suit and seeing how my light flies all on its own, neon and bouncy like a wannabe star.

What I know now is she wanted something else for me. For me to wake each morning and recognise my own flesh, for this one thing she made—me—to remain how she intended, for one of us to make it out unscathed