They put me in a holding cell with a black kid and a white kid and a Chinese kid. We're the United Nations of juvenile delinquents.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the diversity and unity among youth despite their different backgrounds.
In this quote, Sherman Alexie reflects on the experience of being in a holding cell with peers from different racial backgrounds. The phrase 'United Nations of juvenile delinquents' suggests that even in difficult circumstances such as incarceration, the children share a common bond that transcends their ethnicities and illustrates the complexities of youth identity and social issues.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about racial equality in schools.
Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.
My wife was the first romantic partner who understood both American and native parts of me - not so much the positive stuff, but the damage.
I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
We all have to find our own ways to say good-bye.
I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature.
If you want to have the kind of relationship that your heart yearns for, you have to create it. You can't depend on somebody else creating it for you.
Of all the actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all the actions of our lives, 'tis the most meddled with by other people.
And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Forgiveness - this needs to be our greatest skill. The way to get good at forgiveness is: to be thankful for all the little things you see in the other person.
The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.
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