Quotes About Assimilation

If I speak my version of Spanish in Spain, they laugh. Same with Mexico. It's an alien world to me.

În c?rÈ›i am luat contact cu universul: asimilat, clasat, etichetat, gândit, redutabil înc?; È™i am confundat dezordinea experienÈ›elor mele livreÈ™ti cu desf??urarea întâmpl?toare a evenimentelor reale. De aici provine idealismul meu de care mi-au trebuit treizeci de ani ca s? m? dezb?r.

by the end of the Seventies, most Asians in America were recent immigrants, who naturally weren't inclined to see themselves through the lens of being "Asian." They thought of themselves first as members of their own specific ethnic communities, and second as aspirational Americans; the pan-ethnic organizing work of the Asian American pioneers of the Sixties made as little sense to them as it might to the relatives they'd left behind in Asia.

But Beverly warned, Sasha, civilized as the British are, you shouldn't assume that just because you're clever, they will accept you as one of them. There are many who are suspicious of a first-class mind, while others will make a judgment based not on the words you say, but the accent in which they're pronounced. - Dr. Streator

Whenever you're interviewed, think British, act Yiddish

What my yia yia could never understand about America was why everyone pretended to be happy all the time.

I'm not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness.

Whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever he seemed to be would become what he was - already an American, in other words.

We weren't prejudiced against them. We wanted to include them in our society if they would only act normal!

We were ready to accept the Negroes. We weren't prejudiced against them. We wanted to include them in our society if they would only act normal.

Antes era possível, em geral, dizer a nacionalidade da pessoa pela cara. A imigração acabou com isso. Depois ainda dava para descobrir a nacionalidade pelos sapatos. A globalização acabou com isso.

We have in America," he said, "twenty million people of German descent. Almost as many Irish. In New York State alone there are more Italians than in Rome. We have more Scandinavians than there are in Sweden. Here, side by side, dwell Czechs, Roumanians, Slavs, Poles and Dutchmen. We also have some Jews. We have solved the problem of living together without wanting to cut one another's throats. You will have to learn to do the same in Europe. We shall have to teach you.

If we happened to somehow distinguish ourselves, we quickly napped into place, like rubber bands

My grandfather said white people can't exist without speaking. He said they're all just imitations of each other, so it's like they have to speak to distinguish themselves.

Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.

In a sense, I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You

Unlike her parents, and her other relatives, her grandmother had not admonished Ashima not to eat beef or wear skirts or cut off her hair or forget her family the moment she landed in Boston. Her grandmother had not been fearful of such signs of betrayal; she was the only person to predict, rightly, that Ashima would never change.

When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the room, her grandmother reproached her. Not that water. Give her the boiled water. She's not made to survive here.

Assured by his grades and his apparent indifference to girls, his parents don't suspect Gogol of being, in his own fumbling way, an American teenager.

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

Als je zonder je eigen taal leeft, voel je je gewichtloos en tegelijkertijd overbeladen. Je ademt een andere lucht in, op een andere hoogte. Je bent je altijd bewust van het verschil.

Gogol and Sonia] call up their American friends, who are happy enough to see them but ask them nothing about where they've been. And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.