Somewhere in the Unknown World Quotes

“Everything in the world that mattered was gone. I prayed secretly. Perhaps we all did. No one wanted to be identified as a probable terrorist. So we prayed hiding in our rooms. We prayed for a return to what was, and a future that could be. We were held in a place that felt as if war didn't exist, in a world that we knew was fraught with fighting.”
― Kao Kalia Yang, Somewhere in the Unknown World

“As they drove me to their home in Minneapolis I heard police sirens. I saw homeless people with their bags and shopping carts beside them. I saw broken concrete and uneven sidewalks. I thought - I've made a mistake. How can America go into the world and speak of humanity, peace, and prosperity, when there are so many within its own borders looking for help, searching for meaning, worth, a chance at a good life?”
― Kao Kalia Yang, Somewhere in the Unknown World

“It was the first time I could tell my story. Standing before me were 20 students. I stopped being embarrassed. The faces of my classmates show me that they were interested and engaged. The professor gave me an A. That A has given me the courage to live in my in my story fully and fearlessly. To say to anyone who wants to judge me or any other refugee in the world, judge me. Judge us only after you have heard our stories.”
― Kao Kalia Yang, Somewhere in the Unknown World

“Somewhere in the unknown world a yellow eyed woman sits with her daughter quilting. Some otherwhere alchemists mumble over pots, their chemistry stirs into science, their science freezes into stone. In the unknown world, the woman threading together her need and her needle nods toward the smiling girl. Remember this will keep us warm. How does this poem end? Do the daughter's daughters quilt? Do the alchemists practice their tables? Do the worlds continue spinning away from each other forever? - Lucille Clifton”
― Kao Kalia Yang, Somewhere in the Unknown World

“For the refugees from everywhere, men, women, and children, who's fates have been held by the interests of nations who's rights have been contested and denied, who's thirst and hunger go unheeded and unseen.”
― Kao Kalia Yang, Somewhere in the Unknown World