88 Quotes About Immigrant-experience

...I missed even the idea of home. But it seems to me that if you are someone who leaves, then you must always be leaving, because to stop leaving is to stay, which holds its own consequences. The space between staying and leaving, I think, is called longing.

The gaping hole in her heart is amplified when she catches a glimpse of the strands of silver hair framing her once young face in the mirror.

In Manhattan, brown men were either cab drivers or Wall Street bankers, immigrants or expatriates, the gulf between them as wide as a skyscraper was tall.

My parents already know I'm bereft of their culture, that their son is almost as Frank or Bill as any other American, but they also believe this is necessary: that if their son is to become president, it won't happen while he is wearing a turban. They're willing to surrender their culture in order to assure my success, which means the price of my inclusion here is our alienation from each other.

You came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived.

[Willis is] asking to be treated like an American. A real American. Because, honestly, when you think American, what color do you see? White? Black? We’ve been here two hundred years. Why doesn’t this face register as American?

What's with everybody always trying to get rid of the Indians?" I said, not really asking for an answer. I thought again of the history-book pictures. Astronomers and brain surgeons. They should have done brain surgery on Columbus while they had the chance.

Going out on a date was very cheap in those days [1962]. I borrowed my father's station wagon, put in a gallon of gas for 29 cents, went to the movies for 50 cents a ticket, bought a pack of cigarettes for 25 cents, and had a McDonald's hamburger for 19 cents apiece. It was very doable.

My parents were really into the whole “American Dream” thing when I was growing up. They didn’t know that by the time we could attain it, the American Dream had morphed into something else entirely, and no one could pinpoint what it was anymore. But maybe that was the whole point. In America, the dream is whatever you think it is.