Lisa See Quotes

While I resonate deeply with my maternal cultural heritage, I identify as American.

My father grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with my grandparents. In Norwegian my name is pronounced 'Yoo' but my father used to call me 'Joe.'

My mother is French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. I've been raised, and she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian.

I'm about as Chinese as Herbert Hoover.

I come from an immigrant family, but I know no other nationality apart from British.

My mother's Polish; my dad was Irish.

I've always had a complex relationship towards my identity as an American.

No, my family is Russian, Georgian, via Ellis Island.

I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

My father's Peruvian! I actually have a lot of family in Cuzco. I'm also Swiss, Alaskan, French, Spanish and Italian.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

I was born in America, but I consider myself a Filipino.

I am an American. I adore Britain and have a strong English half, but my roots are here in the U.S. - it is not a matter of choice; it is simply fact.

I love my heritage both as someone who grew up as a Muslim and as an Indian - it's part of who I am and I would never deny it.

It's a complicated issue, but I define myself as an American, primarily.

Yeah, I think that's sort of the American way. And it's also the Polish way, it turns out.

The other aspect of American identity worth focusing on is the concept of America as a nation of immigrants. That certainly is a partial truth. But it is often assumed to be the total truth.

I feel Anglo-American.

You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

My family is Anglo-Indian, and of the four children, I'm the only one who wasn't born in India.

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

I struggled with being a Latino growing up in Los Angeles. I felt very American. I still do. I went to 35 bar mitzvahs before I went to a single quinceanera. I could talk all day about my culture and what it means to me.

I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.

My mom came to the U.S. very young, and then she married very young. But she was never American. She was always Scottish and would make sure that I knew that I was, too.