Min Jin Lee Quotes

We talk about what's important to Hispanics: education, family, creating an environment in which you can achieve what you want to achieve because there aren't going to be obstacles in your way.

Our parents decided not to teach us Chinese. It was an era when they felt we would be better off if we didn't have that complication.

I came to New York in 1986. My father didn't think it was a good idea. I didn't know how I found it, but I went to Hunter College. I had no money and I couldn't speak English.

Mum was born in 1938 in Guyana and came to Britain at the end of the 60s. She settled in Tottenham, north London, and worked for London Transport and then as a home help, a care assistant and finally a local authority officer. Bringing up five children singlehandedly with little money can't have been easy, but she did it with tremendous style.

For me, as an immigrant who didn't speak the language, when I would have struggles as a kid, my dad would say, 'Once you are able to communicate with people, they're able to connect with you beyond your otherness.' That is really the message I've carried throughout my life.

Asian-Americans, we're not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.

I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back.

I love America. I eagerly became a citizen. I have no bitterness toward those casting directors who dismissed me because of my accent, nor toward the producers and directors who wanted to cast me but thought the audience wouldn't accept my accent. I think they're selling their audience short.

I want people to experience what it's like being from Haiti, coming to America, being Wyclef - multicultural, multilingual.

I was born in Costa Rica and we moved to America where it was a whole new world for me.

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad, with very little and he also made his way out through education.

I came here when I was almost 22. I'm perfectly bilingual, but I'm never going to sound like Sandra Bullock.

When you get into the third or fourth generation of Latino immigrants to the United States, you see the kids speaking more English than Spanish, and it's important that we don't lose our identity, our language.

America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.

Most Americans have parents or grandparents who immigrated to this country, and we know the hardships they faced, from learning the language to dealing with prejudice.

I'm first generation in the country - my family's Mexican.

My experience of Chinese culture is indirect, through echoes. When I approach the cashier at my local Chinese supermarket, they switch to English before I've even said a word. They somehow know that I'm not quite Chinese enough.

In this country, it doesn't make any difference where you were born. It doesn't make any difference who your parents were. It doesn't make any difference if, like me, you couldn't even speak English until you were in your twenties.

Latinas who come to the U.S. should adapt, learn English and become a part of the community.

Everyone thinks England and America are the same, as we have the same language, but I felt like an alien as an English person living in America.

I was born in Santa Monica but brought up abroad so I don't use English much.

I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else.

You know, I was a kid who had difficulty speaking English when I first immigrated. But in my head, when I read a book, I spoke English perfectly. No one could correct my Spanish. And I think that I retreated to books as a way, you know, to be, like, masterful in a language that was really difficult for me for many years.

I was born in America but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe. Many people in my neighborhood hardly bothered to learn English.