Ryan

“Everybody, she says, has been a good citizen. She will say the name, quickly write it on the sticker, and then have me press it to each of their chests as they leave. It is a line of quiet faces. I take them down in my head. Now, she calls out each one as best as she can, taking care of every last pitch and accent, and I hear her speaking a dozen lovely and native languages, calling all the difficult names of who we are.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

“What I was feeling, Winnie,' he said, 'was that maybe the reason prayers never get answered is that everybody prays the wrong way, and for the wrong things. People ask God for good things all the time, and never offer anything in return. But if God exists, if He really made the world and is all-powerful and all-wise and all that, then I figure He made all of the world, including the bad stuff. So if He 'saw that it was good,' He meant just that. From His point of view, bad stuff must somehow be 'good,' or at least must serve some sort of divine purpose. I was trying to give God the benefit of the doubt, see? And look where it got me!”
― David James Duncan, [ The Brothers K By Duncan, David James ( Author ) Paperback 1996 ]

“Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“He was how I imagined a Korean would be, at least one living in any renown. He would stride the daises and the stages with his voice strong and clear, unafraid to speak the language like a Puritan and like a Chinaman and like every boat person in between. I found him most moving and beautiful in those moments. And whenever I hear the strains of a different English, I still shattter a little inside. Within every echo from a city storefront or window, I can hear the old laments of my mother and my father, and mine as a confused schoolboy, and then even the fitful mumblings of our Ahjuhma, the instant American inventions of her tongue. They speak to me, as John Kwang could always, not simply in new accents or notes but in the ancient untold music of a newcomer's heart, sonorous with longing and hope.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker