Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Jessica George

Quote by Jessica George

“My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They’re not saints or masters of knowledge just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.”

Quote by Jessica George

Book:Maame
Create image

Work

Maame

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Jessica George

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Jessica George. more

You May Also Like

“My parents already know I'm bereft of their culture, that their son is almost as Frank or Bill as any other American, but they also believe this is necessary: that if their son is to become president, it won't happen while he is wearing a turban. They're willing to surrender their culture in order to assure my success, which means the price of my inclusion here is our alienation from each other.”

AssimilationImmigrant ExperienceImmigrant ParentsCultural Erasure
Book:Of Color
Create image

“But if I knew any of this back then, I didn't yet have the vocabulary for that knowledge. And perhaps because of that, without intending to do so, I had continued the pattern of some of the men, and most of the women, in my family, reaching s far back as we had memory. We were careless, and shiftless, and unthinking. We left our ancestral homes, we birthed and sometimes buried our children in far-flung places, and we started afresh over and over. We cared for land, but too often it wasn't our land to care for.”

Immigrant ExperienceExpatsImmigrant Parents
Book:Leaving Before the Rains Come
Create image

“Nick nodded. "My mother said that always surprised her-all the houses made out of wood here, especially in the suburbs. She said growing up in the Soviet Union, it was all concrete and cinder blocks where she lived. Wooden houses were for old Russian fairy tales." Sawyer reflected, mulling. "Have you ever wanted to go there?" "Sure. But growing up, I was always told that's was impossible," he said. "At least for me and my mom, given her political history. But it's strange; there were times when I was super aware that she could never bring me back to where she was from, but other times I felt so completely that I have been there in my mind, I forget that I haven't, even now." "Do you speak Russian?" "Of course. My mom's English is perfectly fine, but we always wind up speaking in Russian together." "Do you ever...dream in Russian?" "I do.”

DiasporaBilingualismImmigrant Parents
Book:Summer Fridays
Create image