Luis Alberto Urrea Quotes

I'm certainly proud to be Cuban American, and it's a fantastic opportunity for anybody - regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. It does carry a measure or pride to know where you're from and to know what your roots are.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

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'm of Arab background.

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

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

My siblings and I are known as ABCs, American-born Chinese.

I think I've written about family and things in 'Taipei' which could be considered Asian culture.

I'll be a Quebecker-Canadian. I'm from Quebec, and every time I go to a country, I say that. It's my roots, my origins, and it's the most important thing to me.

I am not an African. I am an American.

The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American.

In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis has caused me to equate being Iranian with being alienated.

There's a big difference between race and culture. Because racially, I'm an Indian man. Culturally, not at all.

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.

I exist in this hyphen. I'm an Indian-American-Muslim kid, but am I more Indian, or am I more American? What part of my identity am I?

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

My identity and my background still remain with me when I go to a foreign country. I have kept my nationality.

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

I always understood my ancestry, like that of so many others in the Gulf Coast, to be a tangle of African slaves, free men of color, French and Spanish immigrants, British colonists, Native Americans - but in what proportion, and what might that proportion tell me about who I thought I was?

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 have the Mexican blood. I'm proud to be Mexican.

'Sour Heart' is a collection of seven linked short stories narrated by young Chinese-American girls living in New York City in the '90s. It's exceptionally hard to describe what I've written without sounding delusional or boring, so I'll just say they are stories about growing up and the pleasures and agonies of having a family, a body, and a home.

Kunta Kinte's strength derives from the knowledge of where he comes from, but it struck me that I don't know where I come from. I understand that my last name is Kirby, that I was born in London, third-generation Jamaican, and at some point along the line, that name was changed. I didn't know my history past my grandparents.

I go to Uganda, I can't speak the language. In India, I'm black. In the black community, I'm dark-skinned. In America, I'm British.