Leila Aboulela Quotes

I didn't emphasize my Jewishness because I wanted to. I just happen to have been raised in a family where everybody happened to talk like this, so why would I talk like somebody else?

I'm half Telugu. My mom is Telugu and dad, a Maharashtrian. I was brought up in Gwalior. I was exposed to English, Hindi, and Marathi. I heard my mom speak to her family in Telugu, so I got the hang of it.

I grew up around so many different people in so many different neighborhoods, but the Latino heritage, the neighborhoods, and people have always been a part of my life, ever since I was a kid.

Growing up, my parents were very much about the Egyptian culture. They never really wanted to assimilate in American culture.

My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.

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.

I was born in Paris, and my mother was a French teacher, but then I rebelled against my upbringing and studied Spanish in school. So now I just speak bad French and bad Spanish.

I am Afrikaans. It wasn't ever something that I thought about.

I was born in London. In a lot of ways I'm English, but I have this Iranianness, this culture instilled by my parents, by my family.

Even though I grew up in America, at home we spoke mostly Chinese, because my mom is from Taiwan.

I consider myself half Spanish.

I grew up Mexican.

My parents would dress us up in traditional Vietnamese clothing to go to school for heritage day. We have a Vietnamese nanny that my parents wanted us to have so we could stay in touch and know where we came from.

Neither of my parents had English as a first language.

My parents always wanted me to learn about my culture and tried to make me eat Vietnamese food.

I was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories of Armenia, celebrating Armenian holidays.

I grew up in a very old-fashioned Roman Catholic, Italian-Irish family in Philly.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'

Well, I'm Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it's my name.

I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this white kid.

Few people know that I grew up in Germany and that my family still lives there.

I grew up speaking both languages, and for me that's really important.