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First Generation Quotes

Browse 12 quotes about First Generation.

First Generation Quotes

“What tethers me to my parents is the unspoken dialogue we share about how much of my character is built on the connection I feel to the world they were raised in but that I've only experienced through photos, visits, food. It's not mine and yet, I get it. First-generation kids, I've always thought, are the personification of déjà vu.”

ChildrenCultureFamilyIdentityImmigrationParentsImmigrantsAssimilationDiasporaFirst Generation
Book:Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays
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“When we talked about "A Modest Proposal" I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor 'cause he was just a fan. I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at the Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity onto me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness.”

ChineseWhitenessImmigrant ExperiencePocFirst Generation
Book:Fresh Off the Boat
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“There were aspects of their lives that felt familiar. Their parents were busy working as many jobs as they could, and whatever connection they maintained to the past had more to do with household tradition than politics. Words like 'genocide' and 'trauma' were forbidden. ...To me, Asian American was a messy, arbitrary category, but one that was produced by a collective struggle. It was a category capacious enough for all of our hopes and energies. There were similarities that cut across nationality and. class: the uncommunicative parents, the cultural significance of food, the fact that we all took our shoes off at home.”

CommunityIdentityImmigrationAsian AmericanFirst GenerationAssimilation Nondualism
Book:Stay True
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“Here’s to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here’s to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here’s to the janitors who don’t understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here’s to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here’s to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here’s to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here’s to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here’s to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here’s to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here’s to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on.”

ImmigrationDiasporaFirst Generation
Book:Questions for Ada
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“You know, I just... I just feel like it's unfair, that my whole life is unfair, like I was born into the wrong place and family. I never belong anywhere. My parents don't understand anything about me. And my sister is gone. Sometimes I watch those stupid TV shows, you know? The ones where mothers and daughters talk about feelings and fathers take their kids to play baseball or get ice cream or some shit like that, and I wish it were me. It's so stupid, I know, to want your life to be a sitcom.”

American CultureFitting InImmigrant ExperienceFirst GenerationMexican Culture
Book:I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
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“I was to inherit them, the legacy unfurling before me this way: you worked from before sunrise to the dead of night. You were never unkind in your dealings, but then you were not generous. Your family was your life, though you rarely saw them. You kept close handsome sums of cash in small denominations. You were steadily cornering the market in self-pride. You drove a Chevy and then a Caddy and then a Benz. You never missed a mortgage payment or a day of church. You prayed furiously until you wept. You considered the only unseen forces to be those of capitalism and the love of Jesus Christ.”

KoreanFirst Generation
Book:Native Speaker
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“It's a maddening dig First and Onlys often hear from our friends and family back home. 'You've changed.' I was still the same person inside, but aren't we all meant to change throughout our lives? ...At the time, I didn't fully grasp that for First and Onlys, our efforts to recalibrate and survive in new spaces can often be misunderstood as leaving our friends, our culture, or our families behind. We face dual rejection—in our new environments and in our old ones—for opposite reasons.”

First GenerationFirst Generation Immigrant
Book:First Gen: A Memoir
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