Gene Luen Yang Quotes

I navigate different cultures daily, and I understand how people can make false assumptions because of their lack of interaction with the cultures I find myself in. But if they don't frequent these spaces much, how can they rush to judgment?

But here’s the thing: Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed as high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves. Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture that they are partaking in.

I'm a British intern going in. I'm hoping that John will just kind of tackle it from who this person is and what she's about rather than trying to go in on her culture. We need to move a step forward than that.

I feel like Africans are too often portrayed as people on the National Geographic channel: the image is of an African man in a loincloth chasing a gazelle. It's not intentionally racist; I wouldn't call it racist at all. It's a lack of understanding another culture.

I don't think anyone could write about another culture and get it 100 percent accurate.

There are cultural issues everywhere - in Bangladesh, Latin America, Africa, wherever you go. But somehow when we talk about cultural differences, we magnify those differences.

Successful occupation will not occur unless the special circumstances of this unusual country are heeded.

You approach the Mullahs as if they are normal people. They are not. You see them in your own image; you should not.

Some things are really sacred and important to other cultures, so you have to be aware, politically, about those things before you just adopt them.

No matter how certain I am about some culture or some group of people, my opinions are only as accurate as the amount of time I've spent with them.

The PC way of handling culture has been to not talk about it. But we should be talking about it.

Wherever you go, respect the local culture or you will suffer.

I jumped off a bridge in Italy, is that culturally insensitive? Is saying 'mamma mia' culturally insensitive?

In the U.S., the FBI or the people I met from the Department of Justice might be ignorant about Islam or about the East more generally, but I felt they were less willing to make blanket judgments about Muslims. This caution was less evident with some of the authorities I met in India.

There is no reason why an American scholar cannot by himself or herself develop an adequate understanding of another culture. And I don't find any reason to suppose that the birth within a culture automatically confers understanding.

When you care about the culture, you can stop, pause, and say, "Okay, where do I stand in the midst of this all?"

Africa doesn't leap on you immediately; it seeps slowly, and it's incredibly important to be respectful and humble there.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating.

You cannot transpose the U.S. system on Turkey, and the Turkish system on France etc. You have to understand the people and their culture. That's leadership.

If you're coming from America to Iraq, then how are you supposed to be objective? I mean, you could pay lip service to being objective, but how are you going to objective when you're embedded with the Marines? The Marines are saving your life every day and they're protecting you.

I wanted Kimi to be a Japanese record with a Japanese title. I wanted it to be for them. They appreciate things on a different level, and take their art very seriously - that's special if you're an artist.

No one is helped when cultural critics use their voices irresponsibly.

Orientals, and the Malays in particular, are a sensitive people: delicacy of sentiment is predominant with them.

I say the same thing that I've said for decades now, which is: don't go over to Japan trying to change it, thinking that you know better. Go there trying to understand.