Genesis Rodriguez Quotes

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

I grew up having two different perspectives - one in English, one in Spanish. Two different cultures, very different - but I think that, to me, it's one. I'm just as American as I feel Latin.

I choose to be American, I choose to live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I choose to have Puerto Rican/Jewish neighbors, and I choose to maintain my Chinese identity.

I have many friends who are both Mexican and Mexican-American and others who, I guess you would say, are somewhere in between. The ironic thing is that all three of those categories often exist inside of the same family.

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.

A lot of Latinos are like me: third generation, English speaking.

There are men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there upon the [Hudson] river.

If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me.

I was twice-born. I'm Mexican by nature and Hungarian by nurture.

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

I'd say it's even harder to cater to Hispanics than to the lesbian or gay community. We're so culturally separated: Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Venezuelans. We're all so different.

I've always loved writing, and my heritage has been interesting, growing up in a bi-cultural family. My mother being Vietnamese and my father being French, it's like an East-West meeting in my house.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

The word 'Chicano' was originally a derisive term from Mexicans to other Mexicans living in the United States.

I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctuating between those identities.

I was a redhead when I first came to America.

I'm a first-generation American, so I had friends from several cultures while growing up, including Indian and Iranian friends.

I'm Italian, but some people think I'm Jewish because I work the Yiddish. I also work the Italian, by the way.

I think that Mexican-American kids live in a global world. It's not even bi-, it's multi-. You know, for those of us who grew up with different countries on our block, different nationalities, you know, we moved into multiple worlds.

America is this incredible mosaic of immigrants, so people really want to be anchored in some kind of culture as well as the one they are living in.

My identity is not based on performance; it's based on something that's pre-determined by someone else, and I don't even understand what that is because I'm an African who came to America.

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

I'm so proud of my Chinese ancestry, but I was born and raised in America, and I really believe in American values, our American system, our freedom, our liberties.

We can make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.

Australia has an increasingly multicultural society.