Quotes About Assimilation

At the turn of the century, New York had more speakers of German than anywhere in the world except Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than anywhere but Dublin, more Russians than in Kiev, more Italians than in Milan or Naples. In 1890 the United States had 800 German newspapers and as late as the outbreak of World War I Baltimore alone had four elementary schools teaching in German only.

He would take refuge in a homey understanding of Faroese ways only to be slapped back to an uncomfortable position as an American by some terrible smell: uncomfortable because he could no more now imagine himself standing at an oak door with a brass knocker, wearing a tie and holding a bottle of Médoc, than he could picture eating rotten meat. He was floating around in cultural hyperspace; nothing felt right.

Quiérase o no, siempre se es bilingüe desde una lengua, aquella en la que uno se aposenta primero, siquiera provisoriamente, aquella en la que uno se reconoce.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German. (Eliot's translation)

In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.

American Born Confused Desi Emigrated From Gujarat House In Jersey Keeping Lotsa Motels Named Omkarnath Patel Quickly Reaching Success Through Underhanded Vicious Ways Xenophobic Yet Zestful. or American Born Confused Desi Emigrated from Gujarat House In Jersey Kids Learning Medicine Now Owning Property Quite Reasonable Salary Two Uncles Visiting White Xenophobia Yet Zestful Now you know your ABCDs.

Australia has an increasingly multicultural society.

The stewardess stopped beside their seats then and introduced herself. "I'm a full-blooded Apache Indian," she told them. "Barbara Slater is my American name and I was educated in public schools." She slipped into the empty seat beside Di. "My Indian name is too long to remember. So won't you please just call me Babs?

How could I be sure of these teeangers' national origin? Was I using names of origin to give them a place instead, when it was clear that they were moving toward a new language?

The fact that I am writing to you in English already falsifies what I wanted to tell you. My subject: how to explain to you that I don't belong to English though I belong nowhere else Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Its as if God cruised through one of those Chinese fast-food buffets and bought Abe the full meal dealso he can pass for Mama's beloved son. When it came to my turn, all that was left was one of those soggy egg rollsthat doesn't qualify as real Chinese food.

Once you become fluent in a language or in a set of ideas, you immediately internalize them to the extent that other languages and ideas sound automatically strange and foreign.

Art, to be fully appreciated, must be true to contemporaneous life. It is not that we should ignore the claims of posterity, but that we should seek to enjoy the present more. It is not that we should disregard the creations of the past, but that we should try to assimilate them into our consciousness.

Samia, it appeared, had become one of those desis who drink Pepsi in Pakistan and lassi in London.

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.

Don't set yourself apart in the way you dress, the way you think, the outdated codes of behavior you cling to, the ideologies to which you attach your loyalties. Because if you do, you will be treated differently—not because of racism, though that does still exist, but because you insist on your difference from everyone else in this multiethnic, multireligious, multitudinous United Kingdom of ours. And look at all you miss out on because of it.

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

It's funny,' Rado says, 'I can only be Bulgarian when I'm in France. Here, I'm semi-French. Everything is funny and bizarre, and I laugh like someone watching a Beckett play. Except I am a Frenchman with Bulgarian memories. […] But I'll never be one of them. Ah, the filthy French!

They were now forced to graft hardy American vines onto their native plants.

I know that we're being inexorably taken over by the Americans. Without a doubt. I don't mean invaded or anything like that, just taken over. By degrees.

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.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

It is a most disgraceful shame the way in which Irishmen are brought up. They are ashamed of their language, institutions, and of everything Irish.

I couldn't fit in the Irish community in New York. I was never one of the boys because they would talk about baseball or basketball, and I knew nothing about it.