Chinese Americans

"I used to pray to god, Buddha, and the Force because that’s how much a belief it was for me. It was a religious experience for me. No small thing! No small connection there… I’ve been part of the [fandom] family for so many decades that now to actually be in the family is pretty crazy."

"I love doing TV. It's so great for my world as a mom, as someone who likes to have a steady job and go to work feeling secure because I'm with a family."

"Mom takes all the credit for my success. Now Mom says, 'I read your face when you were a baby, and it said you were going to be a star. That's why I named you Ming - because it's all about the sun and the stars and enlightenment.'"

"That's what was so amazing about Mulan. Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is."

"I'm not one of those actresses that's going to feel like I never achieved my dreams and goals and just get disgruntled and hate everything about the business. I've had so much fun."

"I was a nerd! I was president of my science fiction club. Doesn’t get any nerdier than that. I took Latin — that’s pretty nerdy. And theater. I was a trainer for our football team. I got into the boy’s locker room that way, ha! I loved being in high school. I had a boyfriend all through high school. I was friends with all different kids in different clubs. A floater!"

"Being Buddhist, I do believe we are reincarnated. Our spirit goes back into the celestial forces and we come back based on how well we’ve treated others — whether we come back better or in worse forms."

"I think, definitely with this business, it was part luck, part timing, and maybe some destiny. I think we’re all destined for something. So I’m just very grateful, I’m always extremely grateful for any job that comes along and any dreams that can come true. Because it’s a really tough business, especially if you’re a woman, and especially if you’re an ethnic woman, and especially now, if you’re an older woman. So I’m always very, very grateful."

"The whole reason why we’re in this business is to please our fans. When I go to conventions, I see the reactions of women and men alike, and some girls actually shake and cry when they tell me stories about how much Mulan has influenced their lives and had such a strong impact in their lives. It’s profoundly moving for me. So I think it is important to not just gain new fans with the live-action adaptation, but really pay tribute to the fans that have been around for so long with the film and now have passed it on down to their kids and their families."

"I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is."

"I think the “young adult” age is such a critical period of our lives. Young adults are still young enough to dream of magic and possibility, yet old enough to think for themselves and to begin to make real change in the world."

"I just did not feel like there were any Asian women out there who I could identify with…I thought it was our role to be quiet and that people would look down on me if I ever spoke out."

"It might feel safer to stay hidden away, but safer is not always better. We all have things to say. Learning how to speak up helps us feel valued and a part of the community. And by honing our voices, we can change the world."

"My parents never overtly pushed us to marry Chinese (in fact, my dad was an equal opportunity dater in his time). However, they always encouraged us to value our Chinese-ness. It was never something to be ashamed of. I grew up in a very Chinese American household; Mom cooked Chinese food almost every night, yet she loved her French cooking classes. We all played multiple classical instruments, but were also avid Broadway fans."

"U.S. history and China's history are very, very deeply - and in a complicated way - intertwined with each other over a few hundred years. And so there were times when that relationship was fraught with tension. But there were also times of great friendship…"

"I always feel that how people treat animals is not too far from how people treat each other, especially under stress or under certain circumstances…"

"Visibility is not enough—we need actual complexity. Visibility can quickly turn into invisibility when the stories that make us visible actually reduce our humanity and complexity. This is especially true if we prop up token stories—tokenism is a big problem when it comes to the film industry—or any industry…"

"History books are necessary in order for us to know and perceive the truth, and there’s always a question of perspective and who gets to tell the story…"

"The ambiguity when the performance of self becomes self-destructive, or when performance of self becomes pathological. That gray area interests me as a poet because it’s so wrapped up in everyday life now that it’s almost mundane. So much of this performance is tied to feelings of worth and value; in essence, it becomes ongoing, an entire existence all on its own…"

"I would want a dreaming machine that dreams up the most beautiful dreams and then show me exactly how to make them a reality…This is the eternal conundrum: the visualization of desires (dreams), and then the dissonance between that and reality."

"Among Chinese-American writers, two immediately come to mind: Yiyun Li and Ha Jin, with their particular mix of displaced characters, circumstances and past. Their stories often have tragedy, but rise above that. They elicit discomfort and compassion — good and necessary conditions that change me, as any writing is capable of doing by putting me in unfamiliar situations and magnifying the details I would have overlooked."

"There is a beginning, a middle and an end. And I think for those of us who have crossed borders, the artificial beginning is interesting to me. There is a clear-cut — old life, that’s old country, and there’s new life, new country.…"

"I like to think a thought and then I like to follow it, like a little seed, for a long time and see where that growth leads me. Sometimes it leads me to an entirely different place from where it started and that gives me joy."

"There is a saying that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. No one is truly equal and free until everyone is equal and free. When a society allows anyone to be treated as less than equal and therefore less than fully human, we not only rob those people of their full humanity, we also become complicit in their mistreatment. Sometimes people think they can look the other way as long as “their group” isn’t harmed. But that is an illusion because we are all connected by our humanity, and as history has proven over and over again, harsh and autocratic power will inevitably spread like cancer to maintain itself…"

"I always used to say strongly that I was not an autobiographical writer, so strongly it was clearly suspicious…Even without this book, I can now say that is just a lie."

"A lot of Asian American parents are sort of like, Oh, Why’d you stick your neck out? You’re really going to get—you’ll be the nail that sticks out, then you’ll get hammered down. You’ll bring trouble to yourself and to your family. And you know, that’s not really the way it works. It’s really the more you speak up, the more possibility [you have] for making a difference, for making a change, instead of suffering in silence. It’s the only way—especially in a democracy—it’s the only way to improve conditions in your community, to make it better…"

"My primary identity as a kid was being rejected by American society—because you’re from another country, you can’t possibly be American—and my parents’ identity more as being Chinese, so I saw myself as Chinese…"

"…it’s very important to remember that simply because a book has queer characters does not mean that only queer people can read them. I’m an Asian American lesbian, and I’m capable of enjoying books about straight white people. It works the other way around, too."

"…I would have been a much better-adjusted adult earlier on if I’d read a single book about real queer people when I was growing up."

"…Within the range of YA books that feature LGBT main characters, there are many more books about gay boys than girls, and transgender characters are the least represented. I would encourage librarians who acquire books for their libraries to remember that LGBT includes four letters that represent four very different experiences. Because there are fewer books about queer girls and trans characters, you have to look harder to find them, to ensure that lesbian, bisexual, or trans students can also have the benefit of diving into a fictional world starring people like them."

"I wanted to be a writer because I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It’s the one thing that has been a constant my entire life, so there is no why; it simply is."

"You can't allow fear to take over your life. If you do, you'll look back and you'll have regrets. I learned this a long time ago, because I think "my God, my parents came over from another country". It would be really scary for me to move to China and leave everything behind. But I have to remember that fear is something everyone feels and it's natural. You might feel fear 10 times a day in your life, and you have to try to understand it…"

"as a woman, it's absolutely clear to me that we have the freedom of creating alternate myths, and for Frank Chin, as a male, there is a monolith, one monument of a myth. The other difference-I just discovered this recently and am very surprised at this coincidence-I think he just published his translation of The Art of War [Sun Tzu, ca., 500 B.C., ascribed to Sun Wu], one of the traditional Chinese books of war. He's brought this into the world at the same time that I am writing my book of peace. You can see the fundamental difference in values."

"What are the real important issues at stake? I have identified two. One of them is the racial and cultural myths. Whom do they belong to? Frank would say they belong to real Chinese such as himself. And they do not belong to, for example, the Caucasians. My feeling is, if somebody goes to a bookstore and buys my book, then they have bought the myths, and they can have the great myths of China by reading them. The only way that myths stay alive is if we pass them on. He has also been saying that there is a true text, including the chant of the Woman Warrior. Now I know that myth is not passed on by text; it's mostly passed on by word of mouth, and every time you tell a story and every time you hear it, it's different. So there isn't one frozen authentic version; there are many, many authentic versions different from person to person."

"there are plenty of black men and Asian men who love Alice Walker's work. And they love my work. And there isn't even a battle going on. It's Ishmael Reed all by himself. It's Frank all by himself. But the press plays it up as if it's all these Asian men against me. I think that for a while Frank got so much press because the press didn't know who else to call. So every time a new book comes out, they call Frank and then he speaks as if he's speaking for everyone and says, "Oh, we hate Amy Tan; we hate Maxine." But it's just him; he doesn't speak for anybody."

"("San Francisco writer Edward Iwata wrote, "The struggle between Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston is a literary battle for the soul of Asian Americans". How do you respond to this?") A: For a while I just thought, Why doesn't Frank Chin just shut up and go home and write? The only way he's making a literary reputation is to attack me. He doesn't have anything else going for him. That's his career. And by doing that he is destroying himself as a writer because he is just wasting his words. This idea of writing for the soul of Asian America-maybe there is something there. I no longer read Frank Chin, but I hear that the latest works are an attempt to find Chinese American manhood through a violent, warrior mythos, trying to find an identity with killers, with knights from the past who solved things by going to war. He says that our history is one of battle, of blood. I know that he has battle cries and one of his mottoes is, "War." He says it in Chinese. I am going in the completely different direction. I am looking for a language of peace. I am trying to rewrite a book of peace. And so maybe that is fighting for the soul, not just of Chinese American people, but the human soul. I want the human soul to be one where people care for one another and where people cherish and nourish and value one another, and I am trying to think of ways of conflict resolution that have to do with talking or hugging or something, whereas his idea of conflict resolution is to kill each other."

"I am out of theatre. I will not work with any theatre, producer, writer, director, or actor who plays and lives the stereotype. So I write fiction, essays, and articles."

"That this play is the first play by an Asian American at our existence, is proof of the great success white racism has had with us. America might love us. But America’s love is not good. It’s racist love. I don’t want it."

"The first thing that begins to happen when you begin taking yourself seriously as a writer is this imaginary writer’s block that people talk about, but I never really suffered from. But there’s this barrier between the spoken word and the written word, once you set something down in writing it’s supposed to be set in stone or you take on this funny attitude that writing is unnatural…"

"My main concern was to write a novel that uses all of this stuff that is accessible, to write a novel that deals with white racism and Chinese American history and the real Chinese fairy tales and the heroic tradition, and to demonstrate that a Chinese American could do all of this without sending whites up the wall or alienating anybody…"

"I realized it had everything to do with how I grew up and the interaction I had with my father, that he was somewhat abusive…That made me understand that your body retains not just physical damage, but emotional perforations."

"I think that art helps evaluate some of the psychology of yourself as a child, and to illuminate some things you may never have understood."

"Everyone has a different format for how they want to reveal what they are thinking, or what they are seeing, to the audience…I just had to let go of the audience and just started thinking about what I wanted to see."

"Growing up as somebody from another country, really, not what you see on television, I never saw myself in the forefront, ever. We were always in the background."

"The lack of predictability with television is something that’s constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is…"

"The challenge from the beginning was just the diversity and ‘We don’t really know what to do with you’ and ‘There’s not going to be a lot of work for you."

"When I first started, YouTube was known as Asian Hollywood…A lot of these Asian YouTubers popped off because they’re in control of their own content. There’s no gatekeeper on YouTube."

"There is a duality between Awkwafina and Nora. Awkwafina is someone who never grew up, who never had to bear the brunt of all the insecurities and overthinking that come with adulthood. Awkwafina is the girl I was in high school – who did not give a hoot. Nora is neurotic and an overthinker and could never perform in front of an audience of hecklers."

"Awkwafina induces the panic attacks and Nora takes them, [she has] a kind of abject confidence that people outgrow in adulthood."

"People say that you’re never famous as an Asian-American ‘til you make it to the Chinese newspaper… You could be on the cover of Time, and your parents won’t recognize you until you are on that newspaper!"