Edward Said Quotes

The choice of a point of view is the initial act of a culture.

There is an imagined thing called black culture. But culture is a construction. It is learned behavior, not innate. The black American experience is the American experience.

The downside to defining everything Chinese as different than American is that all things Chinese then become exotic.

Race is an invention, not a noticeable genetic presence, and cultural traits are brute concoctions of the social sciences.

I'd be so fascinated to talk to a psychologist or sociologist about the deep psychological impact of seeing oneself represented. I don't think we've really touched the surface of what it does to the psyche of a people if the only image of you out there is negative. Or if it's never out there.

Having an identity is one thing. Being born into an identity is quite a different matter.

I am not defined as a black writer in the Caribbean, but as soon as I go to America or the U.K., my place becomes black theatre. It's a little ridiculous.

If I grew up in a truly color-blind society, I would not be a black American.

Part of my mission as an actor has been to define what an American is.

I just happened to be Latino, and like any artist, I was trying to forge a career. If I opened doors for others, that's great, but nobody starts out with those aspirations.

For so long, the world has viewed West Indian culture as semiliterate and backward, which it is not. In my work, I have tried to give that world an exposure so the world can better understand it.

'M. Butterfly' is usually the answer to the question, 'What has been your favorite experience?' The reason being, it is an astonishing play.

When you're biracial, people sort of make you gray - you're not black, you're not white, you're sort of gray; you're 'other.' And I'm fortunate to have parents that were strong enough to say, 'You're not 'other.' You're special.'

In New York, a 13-year-old Indian girl came up to me crying, saying to everyone nearby, 'This is where I come from.' It's easy to forget that actors have the ability to instill a sense of self in viewers. That's the greatest compliment.

I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.

I always feel like people misunderstand the difference between an Asian story and an Asian-American story. That's completely different, too. I have friends who grew up in Asia, and our experiences are so different. Even though we might look the same, I feel like being Asian and then being Asian-American is completely different.

There's this long history of colonialism and the colonial gaze when applied to matters related to China. So a lot of conceptions about China in literary representations in the West are things you can't even fight against because they've been there so long that they've become part of the Western imagination of China.

I was raised in Nigeria, and my mother is white, but I never saw her as white, not until I came to America. She was just my mother. She didn't really have a color.

'Hispanic' was the term adopted by the government - by the Nixon government in particular - and that made the community feel it was being branded.

In 'National Geographic,' you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am, sitting in Nairobi in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, 'Why is it always going to be these tribal people 'that are the ambassadors of our image?

I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.

I think Hollywood makes the mistake of mixing all these identities and cultures, mostly from the Middle East.

I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S. I didn't identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.

I don't see myself as exotic.

As an American writer, the literary tradition that I draw on the most is the Anglo-American one, and when you are writing in this tradition, the Orientalizing Western gaze is something you have to constantly push against as well as compromise with.