Sherman Alexie Quotes

When people first meet me, they're always like, 'What are you?' as far as ethnicity. And I've been pegged as 'ethnically ambiguous.'

They say I look like a different ethnicity, and nobody's been recognizing me.

Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn’t Asian either

People didn't relate to me as being Chinese or white, just being a hippie, a long-haired hippie.

There was [ in New York] - some of it was this perception of the Midwest that I realized in this multicultural city that - and I don't think it's as true as it was - but everyone was kind of like, what, are you Jewish? Are you Italian? What are you? You know, are you black? Are you da-da-da? Are you Puerto Rican? And so I ended up - my ethnic identity was Midwestern, was white bread. And so it informed a lot of my stand-up.

Sometimes I read that I'm not 100 per cent Chinese, because I don't look all that Chinese. That's a strange one - I am Chinese.

It's important for me to think I'm mixed-race.

I looked real Neanderthal. I could have been Mexican, I could have been black; I could have been anything.

Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'

I'm Jewish, so it's like I'm not totally white. I'm, like, gray.

As I got older, I realised that people saw me as other things - sometimes Korean, sometimes Japanese, sometimes just Asian. When my family moved to a more affluent white neighbourhood, I started to see myself as 'other', this amorphous category. I didn't even know what 'not other' was, but I knew I wasn't it; I wasn't what was normal.

I think I went through early years of my career sort of thinking, "Well, maybe I'm just not British enough." And I always remember my father saying to me, "Don't think you're English, because however English you feel, some Englishman is going to remind you that you're not." Now, for him it must have been a much more acute experience, because he immigrated to England. I was born there, so I kind of felt I had the right to assume that I was British, but it's true. The English are a very warm and welcoming people, but there's a streak in there that reminds you, occasionally.

Regarding the idea of race, .. no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Race seems to embody a fact as simple and as obvious as the noonday sun, but if that is so, why the endless wrangling about the idea and the facts of race. What is a race? How can it be recognized? Who constitute the several races?.

When I walk out into the street or go to the toilet, I don't think of myself as being black. Of course, other people think of me as black when I walk into a pub. Obviously being black is a part of me.

My Latin roots are very strong. All my life, because I'm blonde and blue-eyed, people who aren't Hispanic can't believe I am. And people who are Hispanic always think I'm not, because I don't look like them. Being Latin is part of who I am and I bring that part to every role.

I'll be back. I'll be black. I'll be white black.

The backstory to anyone of mixed race is a lifetime spent being incorrectly perceived and choosing either to allow that misperception to continue or to correct it, so I am aware of identity and race as being much more fluid, I think, than someone who is "purely" one thing or the other. And acting does challenge me to address those particular issues.

In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.

Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of time that they just thought I was.

People look at me, and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. I always thought I'd be the white person in a black play.

My children don't look Hispanic.

In Atlanta, with a large African-American population, Sosa is often considered a black man. In Miami and Los Angeles, with larger Hispanic populations, he is a Latino man, and the black label is rejected as robbing Hispanics of a hero.

I look Asian. I need to go to Japan.

I mean, people don't know what race I am. They never know if I'm Hawaiian or Italian or Mexican or Spanish or white. I could play Jewish, I could play anything.

I am Ecuadorian but people felt so safe passing me off as a skinny, blue-eyed white girl.