Richard Rodriguez Quotes

When my mother read 'The Joy Luck Club', she was always complaining to me how she had to tell her friends that, no, she was not the mother or any of the mothers in the book.

Like so many other young South Asians in America, I am the product of two cultures whose conflicting values pull at me with equal urgency. Never have I felt as torn between the two as I do about the question of marriage.

Even though I spent the first five years of my life in Nagasaki, going to Japan can be really difficult. Even if they know I've been brought up in the West, they still expect me to understand all the subtleties of their culture, and if I get it wrong, it matters much more than if a British person gets it wrong. I find it intimidating.

My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

My father in the film - which we probably haven't seen in previous movies, and in British Asian movies you could probably count on one hand - he says exactly why, actually why he's frightened for his daughter. He came to this country, England, and had a bit of a crappy time.

I was with a Russian family, and I couldn't believe that the grandparents in Russia, first of all I was shocked and delighted to find that the Russian family that I'd been told was so different from the American family, was exactly the same.

I think there's a misconception that all Asian-American experiences are the same. My experiences with my family and the way they wanted me to know my culture are not the same as others.

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

I've been very lucky to have a family who has welcomed me and not been hung up on anything racial, almost overlooking the fact that there was a racial difference. But I can honestly say I do feel like I missed out on some lessons of what the African-American experience is like growing up.

Every culture feels like their parents are the most stringent as far as, "We came to this country to work hard, we want you to be a doctor or a lawyer."

The African, because of the violent differences between what was native and what he was forced to in slavery, developed some of the most complex and complicated ideas about the world imaginable.

The Ice Nation is a pretty brutal place. They breed war heroes. The relationship between mother and child, in that world, is a little bit different than it is in our own society. But, no one really likes being a disappointment to their parents and their family.

I think there's always an expectation when you're a first generation, especially a first-generation Nigerian, of sort of being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. And so, you know, sort of my initial pursuits into the arts and that I was going to pursue film as a career didn't confuse them, but it was definitely something that they were scared about.

I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

Querida, it's alright," he said. "No one has hurt me in years." "Hey, you're supposed to be my brother," I said, trying to joke. "Brother's don't hold their sisters' hands or call them querida." Seb smiled, his hazel eyes starting to dance. "Yes, they do," he said. "This happens all the time." "Well I guess things are different in Mexico then," I said. "Because in America, no way. And I'm an American." "But you're in Mexico now," he pointed out. "Right. And you're saying here, boys holds hands with their sisters and call them sweetheart." "Oh yes. We're very friendly, we Mexicans.

There are five kids in my family and I'm the only one who didn't get a diploma. All the kids got their diplomas hanging in my father's room and I got my gold records. I'd say he was more proud of the diplomas.

It's quintessentially American to transform your family.

So that's little Scorpious. Make sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank god you've inherited your mother's brains.

On daughter Apple's accent: She says Mummy instead of Mommy, I don't mind that. I will if she starts saying basil and pasta the English way, as that really drives me nuts.

When you're a kid, you always feel you have this weird kindred-spirit thing with other Jews, until you get older and you realize it's just middle-class bourgeois Jews that sort of fit a template that your family fits into one way or another.

Families aren't easy to join. They're like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.

It turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all was taken for progress in my family.

Everyone said to me growing up, "You're like an American. You have to go to America. That's your spiritual home."

I suppose I do the Japanese because I just don't know China. Chinese popular culture has never evoked that instant of, "Whoah! What's that?" that I have with Japanese popular culture.

I mean we might even go to war as to whether we love Coke or Pepsi and our whole identity is wrapped up in that choice. You know, for the Russians they felt that these minor differences between these various sodas was just hyped up and irrelevant.