Junot Diaz Quotes

I'm Japanese, and I'm also white American, and neither camp wants me in their camp.

Sudan is not Arab enough for Arabs and not African enough for Africans.

Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.

When I was at school, you had to choose; there was a lot of pressure to assimilate. You were an Aussie, or you were one of 'the wogs' - which was everybody else. But I didn't want to be in either group, so I felt like an odd one out.

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

No matter how American I become, I'm considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

The difficulty of being Afro-Latina, in general, is the lack of acceptance in both communities.

My parents sent me to a school across town, an integrated school, where I had the chance to meet and grow up with people who were from other parts of the world. ... I remember feeling that I would never have anything to contribute on St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't tell the stories that they might have been telling about their forebears and I felt left out.

I'll always be a foreigner.

I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.

Because I was born in Casablanca and my parents were from the south of Spain, I do not have a big central root in France. I feel French but in a few ways, not at all French.

I think it's possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.

It's strange; when I was younger and people would ask, 'Where are you from?', I'd say, 'West Africa', which was odd because I'm obviously not African, but it was my home.

I never fit in. Everyone knew my dad was Indian. I was half-Indian.

I'm a product of Russian culture, but I never felt it was my country.

I'm obviously an American citizen. My parents are American citizens. But I'm not looked at as an American.

My son will be an American, but I remain French.

It's very hard to live in an environment where you're reminded, constantly told that your existence just happens to be here... That you are not meant to be here.

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 parents - they tried to become American, they tried to become British, they tried to become Scandinavian - nobody wanted them, anywhere.

Part of me always felt like the other, the outsider, the observer. My father had two sons with his second wife, who I didn't meet until my late 20s. I was always on the periphery. In Madrid, I was the only Turk in a very international school, so I had to start thinking about identity. All these things affected me.

I have experienced things that I think many Canadians have gone through - the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of being a victim, of being hurt, being marginalized.

I was very different than everybody else growing up. I spoke a different language at home, I ate different food, and I looked different. So I could always relate to Aladdin in that way, being the outcast.

I'm so used to America, used to the traffic in L.A., and I don't really feel it click with the Korean culture. But obviously, I have a Korean face, and I feel like that's just - you know, I can't walk around people like I'm, like, straight-up American. It's like, I'm Korean American. My parents are from Korea.

I know that for me, a lot of people will look at me and they'll think 'Somali' or 'outsider' instead of 'Minnesota.'