Not to have knowledge of what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live as a child.
In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was anything wrong about it. No-one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind.
One of the first things people think of when they think of Native Americans is reservations. We didn't have any idea what that was. We were just young kids growing up in normal blue-collar America.
I'm biracial; I didn't know that until I was 7 or 8 years old. I thought I was full white, which, honestly, I can't even really say because I didn't see colors.
I didn't know anything was wrong with me when I was growing up. I thought everyone went to occupational and speech therapy, I thought these were common things. I thought I was quite normal until I went to school and someone told me it wasn't normal to have a disability.
The clitoris is the female sex organ, and the fact that we aren't told that when we were small children is devastating. We grow up with no information about the pleasure center of our body.
No one ever sits you down at age eight and says, 'Aminatta, this is what's happened so far.' You have to work it out for yourself, and by the time you do, it's ancient history to many of the players. We're trying to make sense of the past, so we start to excavate our memories.
When I was a kid I never knew the difference between a sitcom and a drama. I just knew what my parents were watching and what was making them happy.
I also believe that parents, if they love you, will hold you up safely, above their swirling waters, and sometimes that means you'll never know what they endured, and you may treat them unkindly, in a way you otherwise wouldn't.
Kids who don't eavesdrop on adult conversations are doomed to a childhood of ignorance.
Having that music around us all the time, it was so inspiring. But at the same time, I was a kid. I didn't pay attention to any of it. I'd get on the drums and hit them a few times, and then go outside and play.
My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn't know we were poor until I started giving interviews.
My parents tried to shield me from how famous they were when I was growing up on Long Island. I had no idea.
I honestly realized that my dad was white when someone told me in middle school. They're like, 'Oh your dad's white?' I'm like, 'Oh, my gosh, he really is white.' I knew what race was, but it didn't matter to me.
When kids would say 'Ching Chong Chinaman,' I thought they were talking to someone behind me. I used to think I was a white Jewish girl named Rebecca or Rachel.
No eleven-year-old has any real grasp of death. He doesn't have any real concept of other people--that they feel pain, even that they exist. And his own adult future isn't real to him, either. Makes it that much easier to throw away.
I was raised in Connecticut. And I honestly wasn't aware that my dad was a celebrity until I moved to Los Angeles a year ago.
My parents are actors and never brought work home. I didn't even know what they did until I was about 10 years old. We never talked about it.
Til I was 10 years, I didn't know I had only two siblings. I always thought I had 10 and that they were all my family.
I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.
My son Chris said he was 12 years old before he knew what I did for a living.
