Archie Panjabi Quotes

I have a variety of readers from across the diasporic community, not just from South Asia. I like to write large stories that include all of us - about common and cohesive experiences which bring together many immigrants, their culture shocks, transformations, concepts of home and self in a new land.

I was born in India, and - I was born in Chennai - South Indian. And my parents moved to the U.S. when I was about 8 or 9 years old.

I was born in Iran, left at a very young age - less than a year old - and grew up and was educated in the West.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

I certainly know German colleagues in the U.S. who try to be Americans, try to melt into Americanism, even before they get married and become American citizens. But I've never tried that.

I'm a member of the African diaspora: my parents left the Caribbean and came to London for a better life.

Our brother (many of the Jews of the Middle East) has gone to Europe and to the West [and] come back a Russified Jew, a Polish Jew, a German Jew, an English Jew. He has come back with a totally different conception of things. Western and not Eastern…, coming back with imperialistic ideas, with reactionary or revolutionary ideas… he is not the old cousin, and we do not extend to him a very good welcome

I left Cameroon when I was 13 years old, and I've lived more in Europe than Africa.

I still feel Ghanaian, but my mentality is more European.

My father was up against so many different types of resistance. His whole life was an interplay of East and West. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, which was under British rule then.

My mother is a German who was brought up in the U.K. So, there is so much cross-cultural exposure I had as a child. But Mumbai is my city.

I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father's Cuban, and in 'Body of Lies,' I played an Iraqi.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.

I see the American experience as being defined by the immigrant paradigm of rupture and renewal: rupture with the old world, the old ways, and renewal of the self in a bright but difficult New World.

I don't know what 'home' or 'abroad' is any more.

Most of the people I write about have been ambitious outlanders who have been attracted to New York from other parts of the world.

The immigrant experience in 'Ilustrado' was only a small part of what I intended to be a broader look at the Filipino experience, even if that broader look was itself merely a specific perspective.

I loved 'Ghana Must Go' by Taiye Selasi. It's about a first-generation African family living in America that has to return home to Nigeria when their estranged father passes away.

Well, I have a Norwegian father who emigrated to America in the 1950s, and he still speaks with varying degrees of an accent. Over my lifetime my ear has been well-tuned to that accent. Any first generation kid has that wonderful gift from their parents.

What is Americanization? It manifests itself, in a superficial way, when the immigrant adopts the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here. Far more important is the manifestation presented when he substitutes for his mother tongue the English language as the common medium of speech.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

I grew up in the Ukraine 'til I was about 7, and then I moved to L.A.

The Indo-Canadian community has been a microcosm of the people of Indian origin living abroad besides reflecting India's diversity.

My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

I was born in India - but never really lived there.