Leila Aboulela Quotes

I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.

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

One of the things that Ang brings to all of his projects is his deep sense of being a double exile, an outsider's outsider.

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

It's tough, because I come to Singapore, and people say I'm not Singaporean, and I go to England, and people say I'm not English. It's really hard to find your place, not just in the entertainment industry, but in life.

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 if you are an outsider then you are an outsider always.

I'm half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home.

I don't really feel part of any particular movement.

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

I always prided myself on being apart from the ruling class. I think it's always important, not just in Washington but in life, to be able to able to balance your sense of belonging with what it's like to be someone who doesn't belong.

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.

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.

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

I always had this crisis: where do I come from? I was never an insider, never an outsider; I was always in the middle. But it means I never have borders in my head.

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.

When I speak about 'we,' it gets very complex very quickly. Having grown up in the United States, but also being very much a member of Nigerian societies and also different parts of Nigerian societies, I understand that we construct particular 'we's.'

Culturally, I'm not 100 percent Korean. I'm very mixed and very open.

As a 'parisien d'adoption,' I am only semicognizant of where I may fit at any given time into the French social fabric.

When I come to the airport, they always send me with all the other Israeli Arabs to the foreign workers' line. I don't mind. I feel like I belong more with all the people from abroad and the foreign workers than in the Israelis' line.

I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.

The black geeks of the world, we feel like we don't have a home.

Being asked, "Where are you REALLY from?" It makes one feel OTHERED.

Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.

I woke up one day and realized I could never be an American.