Shiva Ayyadurai Quotes

'Authentic' is one of my least favourite words because in such a diverse country, whose authenticity are you talking about?

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

You'd never know it from reading the rest of the Native writers, but Indians actually grew up with American pop culture.

If I have to pretend to be anything else than French, then I know it's work for me. It's not that it scares me, but it's work. I cannot just pop up on the set and say 'Okay, today I'm Italian!'

I've been told that I wasn't Latino enough, which was code for 'street' enough.

At issue when professional sports teams take the name of Native Americans is the problem of mimicry: having appropriated the land and wealth of America's vanquished peoples, settler culture then appropriates the supposed values and spirit of the vanquished as well.

I'm American; I was born and raised in America, and I don't want to fake who I am to fit a stereotype.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of the indigenous people of the United States of America. I can't imagine watching the news every day - as people debate whose country this is and who should be in charge of it and how to make it great again - and hardly ever see your people brought into the discussion.

I'm mixed race, and it's often hard for me to fit into period pieces.

When I was asked to change Laurel into a Latina for How to Get Away with Murder, I was terrified, because I thought, no one's going to know how to do this because the American take on my culture is never accurate.

Yoga is not Indian; it does not belong to India.

It was quite strange that people were saying I wasn't Asian enough. It's like, 'Oh, you're not Asian enough to play an Asian role.' So what does that mean for people who come from mixed heritage? I grew up in Asia; I'm Malaysian.

I'm finding out what part of punk culture or white indie culture I actually still want to hold onto - What are the values? What are the contributions that I actually like? - and it not coming from a place of desperation or wanting to be embraced or wanting approval, essentially.

We are - as artists, we are racialized through genre and called black - without being called black - through genre.

In 'National Geographic,' you always saw pictures of tribal Africa. And here I am, sitting in Nairobi in our suburban house, watching TV and thinking, 'Why is it always going to be these tribal people 'that are the ambassadors of our image?

I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sort of a bridging figure. I have my Chinese literary heritage and cultural background, so I'm comfortable with these things, but at the same time, I have to navigate the Anglo-American tradition, which has a self-centred view of what Asia and what being Chinese means.

I get irritated by the term 'African writer', because it doesn't mean anything to me.

More than anything, I'm an American kid, and my music reflects that more so than being an Asian-American. I think it's important but also something that can detrimental to your career if celebrated too much.

I think Hollywood makes the mistake of mixing all these identities and cultures, mostly from the Middle East.

Sometimes, we want Asians in the media, but we don't want them to talk about being Asian. For me, that's interesting because I'm from Asia. If you want me to be on television but I can't be Asian, I'm not being true to myself.

Zef is the underbelly of the Afrikaans culture, but it also, like, is Afrikaans culture.

Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in which misrecognition has haunted all cognition.

Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn't spent most of her life in China, she'd have every right to write about it.

I remember distinctly not seeing myself. I didn't see myself in black culture, white culture, mass culture.

I just didn't want people to think, Here's this idiot Danish actor who made up this name to get attention. It's really quite common here, and I've had it all my life.