Mixed Plate Quotes

“I could take my weakness and turn it into a weapon. Instead of being embarrassed, I became unstoppable.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“I never really opened up about how hard it was growing up as a half-breed Filipino in suburban America.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“I’m not taking any of this money with me when I die. What should I do with it now? Hoard it? Invest it in the stock market? No, I’m gonna invest it in my family’s next generation. I’m gonna open doors for them that weren’t opened for us when we got to this country. So maybe, just maybe, they’ll have to sacrifice a little less, and be able to do a little more.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“There is nothing more terrifying than a Filipino mom who’s gone into full self-righteous demonic fury mode. For all you non-Filipinos out there, if you’re ever close to one who’s about to go off, straight up—fucking run.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“if you’re a first-generation American immigrant, the pressure is even worse, because as far as your mom is concerned the only way she’s been successful is if you graduate from college and get a good white-collar job—because that’s the American dream, and your success is her shot at that dream.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“But my mom didn’t hurt you with physical punishment. That wasn’t her thing. Her thing was psychological”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“But if you’re Filipino, you get it, because Filipino moms all do what my mother does. The constant bickering that never really stops or starts, it just is. The ping-ponging from love to punishment, from indulgence to guilt, back and forth, back and forth, over and over. Putting you on a pedestal one day only to tear you down again the next.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“me—both of my halves—for exactly who I was. They accepted our whole family, my brother with his outbursts. My adopted sister. All of us. I was home. I still have that glove to this day.”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance

“But when shit got real for my mom and our family, when we had nowhere to turn and desperately needed help, the Filipinos”
― Jo Koy, Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo – A Hilarious Stand-Up Comedian Memoir of Filipino Heritage and Perseverance