Mya Quotes

I'm black and white, so either, sometimes, you're not considered by the breakdown of the script: you're not 'black enough' for this role. Or you're not 'white enough' for this role. Or, like, looking up to people, who do I identify with? And not seeing Barbies that maybe look like me.

I'm mixed race, and it's often hard for me to fit into period pieces.

I am Indian-American, but I often play ethnically ambiguous roles.

I don't want the whole of my writing or my intellectual energy given over to race because I have diverse interests.

By dismantling the narrow politics of racial identity and selective self-interest, by going beyond 'black' and 'white,' we may construct new values, new institutions and new visions of an America beyond traditional racial categories and racial oppression.

I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.

I wish everybody was just ethnically ambiguous. It would make life a lot easier.

Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.

When I was finishing 'Now You See Me 2,' I remember thinking about exploring the Asian-American identity side of my brain.

For me, whenever I would see a lot of 'black films,' I didn't feel represented in it. I didn't feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.

I view myself as a multicultural woman who happens to be black.

There are several different traits that make up a person's identity. For me, being Vietnamese American is the entirety of who I am.

'Yellow Face' marks my summation of multiculturalism.

It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.

When you ask your white friends what their cultural heritage is, they don't just say white. They give you a math equation. 'Well, I'm a third German and a fourth Irish and one-sixteenth Welsh and one-fortieth Native American for college applications.'

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.

Mixed-bloods loosen the seams in the shrouds of identities.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

I have never run campaigns based on an ethnic coalition.

Growing up, I thought I was white. It didn't occur to me I was Asian-American until I was studying abroad in Denmark and there was a little bit of prejudice.

I find myself frequently introducing myself to someone, saying that, you know, I've grown up black and biracial in the United States.

I think all Latino actors want to be storytellers first. I want to be an actor first, and then I want to be Latina.

It's true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?

Diversity doesn't mean black and white only.

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?