"A lot of us come from countries—if you’re South Asian or Southeast Asian—that have been colonized by Western powers. But that’s never talked about. It’s almost as if in immigrant stories we’re supposed to forget our past once our family comes over here. Or there is a kind of writing about the past, but it’s divorced from US foreign policy. It comes from immigrant parents as well. They say, “Oh, you’re here, it’s a rich land, and there are so many opportunities here, you should be grateful,” without actually acknowledging why we ended up here in the first place. I wanted to show how it was all interrelated."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Women authors from the United StatesWomen academics from the United States20th-century poets from the United StatesWomen born in the 1970sAsian Americans
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cathy_Park_Hong
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Cathy Park Hong
Cathy Park Hong (born August 7, 1976) is an American poet, writer, and professor who has published three volumes of poetry. Much of her work includes mixed language and serialized narrative. She was named on the 2021 Time 100 list for her writings and advocacy for Asian American women.
44 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Cathy Park Hong →
Related Quotes
"Ever since I started writing poetry seriously, I have used English inappropriately."
"As a poet, I have always treated English as a weapon in a power struggle, wielding it against those who are more powe…"
"Nothing gets dated faster than a joke."
"minor feelings: the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from …"
"The flip side of innocence is shame."
"In many Asian American novels, writers set trauma in a distant mother country or within an insular Asian family to en…"
"I’d rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life i…"
"Racial self-hatred is seeing yourself the way the whites see you, which turns you into your own worst"
"The problem with silence is that it can’t speak up and say why it’s silent. And so silence collects, becomes amplifie…"
"To other English is to make audible the imperial power sewn into the language, to slit English open so its dark histo…"