Adina Porter Quotes

I'm a Chinese American.

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

I have two Filipino nannies who have British passport and not me. I don't need British passport. When you were running around in an animal skin, my ancestors were building the pyramids.

I think that's what makes many Swedes jealous of immigrant groups. You have a culture, an identity, a history, something that brings you together. And what do we have? We have Midsummer's Eve and such silly things.

… the tendency, reprehensible and paradoxical as it might be, has been for the national clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly established and more and more prosperous, to cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real. Just as these clusters became more and more objectively American, did they become more and more German or Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish.

I didn't really grow up with any traditions. I grew up in a pretty liberal household in Southern California. I think that's part of my interest in thinking about heritage. I don't have a second language or cultural heritage in that way.

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

I'm proud of being Hispanic.

I am not an African. I am an American.

I'm a first-generation Canadian.

When I think of my work, I'm aware that I'm American and African at all points and times. And without a doubt, my experience and understanding of America was shaped by having immigrant parents.

Africans in the diaspora were constantly being reminded of Africa by their European masters who tried to impress upon them that Africa was primitive. Repudiating this thinly veiled justification of slavery required diaspora intellectuals to focus on Africa and demonstrate that it had made major contributions to world civilization. Consciousness of Africa was also sustained by the continuous flow of people, ideas, values, visions, practices, and expressive culture from Africa to the Americas and vice-versa.

What about a white South African who comes here from Africa. Is he an African American?

We can't restore our civilization with someome else's babies.

The old joke in my family is that the last person who isn't from New York was coming from Russia.

I don't consider myself an Iranian comedian; I consider myself a comedian who happens to be of Iranian descent.

I am second-generation American, and my grandparents are from Puerto Rico.

With a name like Luis Alberto Urrea, it's political no matter what I do.

I'm a first-generation American. My parents are from Nigeria. I had this weird last name that looked Japanese, and then people would see me and go, 'Oh. You're not Japanese.'

My family came from Spain in 1725, and if people want to consider me Hispanic, they can, but I didn't advertise that way, and I'm an American first.

I think everyone wants to know why I look like this. These jokes I make about looking Chinese… My mother's from Hungary and my dad was from Canada. There's a lot of immigration in my past.

People ask where I'm from, and I say 'Los Angeles.' Then they ask again. 'Well, my parents are from Korea.'

I live in the U.S., but I'm from Brazil.

In the past a lot of Italians emigrated to Argentina, and now us Argentinians, and in my case, us footballers, are returning to Italy. We always try to keep our identity.

I'm the granddaughter of immigrants.