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 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….

I regret that I was never an athlete. I regret there isn't time in life. I regret that so many of my friends have died. I regret that I was not brave….

The fact that we're all hyphenating our names suggests that we are afraid of being assimilated. I was talking on the BBC recently, and this woman int….

In Sacramento, my brown was not halfway between black and white. On the leafy streets, on the east side of town, where my family lived, where Asians ….

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 ….

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….

There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers..

But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home..

In the Sacramento of the 1950s, it was as though White simply hadn't had time enough to figure Brown out. It was a busy white time. Brown was like th….

But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers..

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….

Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this secret that has b….

There was a poll released yesterday that said most people would rather give up sex than give up their cell phones..

I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America. Si….

'm constantly depressed by the Mexican gang members I meet in East L.A. who essentially live their lives inside five or six blocks. They are caught i….

The university has become so stultified since the sixties. There is so much you can't do at the university. You can't say this, you can't do that, yo….

Of course, San Diego chooses not to regard the two cities as one. Talk about alter ego: Tijuana was created by the lust of San Diego. Everything that….

I had all this anxiety about what it meant to be a minority. My professors - the same men who taught me the intricacies of language - just shied away….

The notion that you go to a public institution in order to learn private information about yourself is absurd. We used to understand that when studen….

My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to me - when my family….