Amber Liu Quotes

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.

My parents were both Spanish-speakers and they used to speak to me and my siblings in Spanish and we'd answer them in English.

There is a psychic gulf that exists between myself and my grandparents because they don't really speak English, and I don't speak Chinese, and that's my own personal shame because I did not learn, ever. I only saw my paternal grandma a few times in my life, and that's really crazy.

My mother came from Japan, and I really didn't understand her often. Now that I'm older, I do.

I was my mother's translator until I was probably 12 years old, and I remember how people looked at her.

Being in southwest Detroit, when my dad would want to say anything about me or my brothers or sisters, he would start speaking in Spanish to my uncle and my grandmother because we didn't understand.

Me and my mom are pretty cool. My mother's Caribbean, and she gets a little spicy, and I get a little spicy back.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

All my friends had grandparents who had accents. I thought all grandparents were supposed to have accents. My friends were all second-generation, as I was.

Being a third-generation Mexican-American and speaking English exclusively, I heard Spanish spoken by my relatives all my life, especially when they didn't want me to understand what they were talking about.

I remember learning new words, trying to figure out what common things like cider, finding myself upset that my parents couldn't help me understand this new culture, that it was up to me to interpret for them as well as myself.

Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.

The fact that I didn't speak English I think was the most difficult thing for me.

I remember what it was like when my parents couldn't help me with my homework because they couldn't speak the language, or being a translator for my parents. I did that a lot.

When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely.

And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.

It is a sad commentary of our times when our young must seek advice and counsel from 'Dear Abby' instead of going to Mom and Dad.

I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.

When I first came to this country, I didn't know how to speak English.

The erosion of extended family concept and losing out on values are the two things that are primarily responsible for the growing mismatch in the parent-child relationship.

My first language is both English and Spanish. My mom was raised in Los Angeles, so with her we spoke English, but my father was born in Cuba, so with him we spoke Spanish.

We spoke French at home and I didn't know any English until I went to school. My mother was French and met my father when he visited France as a student on a teaching placement.

I did read Indian scriptures when we could get the English versions, but the problem was I never took the time to learn the language. Really, what it comes down to is that I knew the emotion of faith; I knew what my parents were trying to teach me, but we always said 'No' when my mom was trying to teach us Punjabi.

My mother smokes me out. We'll get these long periods of me thinking I'm too busy to call her up or e-mail her, and she'll send me something. My mom's a real whiner. I love her to death, but she always sends me these 'woe is me' things. I think she might be Jewish. I'm not sure. She's Baptist-Jewish, which is a double whammy.

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.