27 Quotes by alex tizon

We could debate whether movies reflect or create the reality. It's clear to me they do both.

You are validating someone's life by telling their story. Even if it's a sad one.

The thing about stereotypes as we all know, there is often truth in them, but it's almost always a partial truth.

My brother Arthur was born in 1951. I came next, followed by three more siblings in rapid succession.

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

Television and movies were our biggest teachers. When we came to the United States, the Vietnam War was just ratcheting up. And so the Asian faces that I saw on the news, they were the face of the enemy. Asian men, particularly, were either small, ineffective, or they were evil. And those messages were deeply, deeply embedded in me for many years.

I first visited the Philippines when I was 29. I thought I would feel at home there, but I felt more out of place than I did in the U.S. I discovered I was more American than Filipino. It was shattering because I never felt quite at home in the U.S., either.

My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.

We all, to some degree, absorb the mythologies around us, our vision refracted by the prisms of our particular time and place.