Celeste Ng Quotes

I get irritated by the term 'African writer', because it doesn't mean anything to me.

People want to call me racist for doing the Bon Qui Qui character, and I'm like, 'Look, Bon Qui Qui is a representation of a hood chick. That's it.' There are lots of hood chicks out there: some are black, some are Mexican, some are Salvadorian, and some are white.

Wherever I go, people ask: 'What is she? What is she?' There has always been an agenda - they're excluding me or including me in something with that question. It is the first thing agents in Los Angeles ask me. And then I'd hear: 'You're not black enough, you're too black, you're Italian - no, you're Spanish.'

I'm an immigrant writer, or an African writer, or an Ethiopian-American writer, and occasionally an American writer according to the whims and needs of my interpreters.

I haven't gotten labeled as a Hispanic actor.

I do have a Mexican accent, but that doesn't mean that I'm a Latin vamp.

Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.

I'm really not that weird. I'm a combination of a lot of different things. Maybe it's just easier to make me look weird than another model who is specifically Caucasian.

You can get pictures into what people are sort of thinking about others. Just go onto Google and type 'Why are Indians' and then look for the autocomplete.

One of the things that I am happy about in my life as an artist is that I am not considered a Hispanic artist.

They just think I'm a white dude. Every once in a while someone thinks I'm Jewish. I get a lot of stuff, but never Latino.

It's really hard because obviously people label you as a British East Asian actor. And I'm just from Salford; it's where I was born.

I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.

I played a Spaniard. I looked about as Spanish as any other fair-skinned German.

I was always typecast as a Latina.

Most of us, when imagining an All-American, wouldn't picture a man who looked like me. Not even I would.

At some point along the way, I stopped being a writer, and I became a black writer. I never used to be a black writer. I used to write 'Spider-Man,' 'Green Lantern,' whatever was lying around. 'Thor,' 'Hulk,' whatever. Now, if the phone rings or when the phone rings, it's almost exclusively some project that has something to do with my ethnicity.

I am looked at as an African American guy because of the color of my skin. I am darker.

I believe that a lot of minority writers stress about whether they get pigeonholed in writing about identity stuff, like you can't write about other things.

I've lived 16, 17 years of my life in Asia, and that's most of my life. I was born in Asia - I've lived cultures that are synonymous with Asian culture - but it's still not Asian enough for some people.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

In the press, there's this desire for the black audience to be this monolithic thing that always responds to the same stars. That's a really reductive way of looking at the black audience.

Asian-Americans are still regarded as 'other' by many of their fellow-citizens.

It's more about the music and doing good shows than it is about our ethnicities. We're not trying to label ourselves as the all-around universal ethnic group. It's not a gimmick.

If someone were to call me 'the next Amy Tan,' it would not be because - or not primarily because - we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let's be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American.