Dinaw Mengestu Quotes
I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.
Mengestu, Dinaw. Interview by Jeffrey Brown. PBS NewsHour, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, 23 Mar. 2007.
This is a very instructional political quotation. It shows us that the popular American narrative of the ideal immigrant who assimilated to everything American was false even in 1916. Almost 100 years later, anti-immigration advocates would complain that the modern immigrant was not totally assimilating as immigrants did in the past. Of course they never did in the past totally assimilate. The assimilation has generally been in the areas of desire for freedom and individual opportunity, democracy, rule of law, human dignity and respect for others. However, immigrants have always brought new customs, foods, literature, modes of worship, language, and values from the “old country”. Bourne was one of the first writers with a national audience to question the classic but never real “melting pot” theory of immigration and suggest the “salad” model though he never used the term.
Dinaw Mengestu is an Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to three novels, he has written for Rolling Stone on the war in Darfur, and for Jane Magazine on the conflict in northern Uganda. His writing has also appeared in Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. He is the Program Director of Written Arts at Bard College. In 2007 the National Book Foundation named him a "5 under 35" honoree. Since his first book was published in 2007, he has received numerous literary awards, and was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2012.
