Language is a social event..

For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where di….

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five blocks. That is not Mexico; tha….

Now we have this idea that, not only do you go to first grade to learn your family's language, but you go to a university to learn about the person y….

I came from a white middle class neighborhood. Was I expected to go back there and teach the woman next door about Renaissance sonnets? The embarrass….

The popular idea of a role model implies that an adult's influence on a child is primarily occupational, and that all a black child needs is to see a….

I think it's an important thing for a Mexican to say, especially now with the rebellion in Chiapas. Mexico has to confront her Indian face, and yet s….

A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed ….

I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty….

The difference between being Mexican and being Chinese, as I can see it, is that when you go to Harvard from a Chinese family, the whole family goes ….

Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in us as a culture that….

We're looking at complexity. We're looking at blond kids in Beverley Hills who can speak Spanish because they have been raised by Guatemalan nannies.….

But lots of emerging racial tensions in California have nothing to do with whites: Filipinos and Samoans are fighting it out in San Francisco high sc….

I had an Indian face, but I never saw it as Indian, in part because in America the Indian was dead. The Indian had been killed in cowboy movies, or w….

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America..

I don't think writers should be convenient examples. I don't think we should make people feel settled. I don't try to be a gadfly, but I do think tha….

So many of my friends tell me they’re not religious. I’m like, Of course you’re religious. You watch Oprah Winfrey, don’t you?.

But very early in life I became part of the majority culture and now don't think of myself as a minority. Yet the university said I was one. Anybody ….

The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of t….

When a society doesn't know what to do with its young, it's in real trouble. When the young don't know what to do with society - at the very least, r….

I find L.A. very interesting, partly because I think something new is forming there, but not in a moment of good fellowship as you might think from a….