When I'm teaching, I tell my students: It's all process. Don't even think of product.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the complexity of cultural identity and the influence of personal experiences on one's understanding of tradition.
Maxine Hong Kingston's quote delves into the intricate process of defining one's cultural identity, particularly for Chinese Americans. It suggests that personal experiences, such as childhood memories and family stories, intertwine with broader cultural traditions, making it difficult to delineate what is purely 'Chinese' from individual life experiences. This complexity highlights the challenges in understanding the layers of identity shaped by both cultural heritage and personal history.
Themes
Cultural IdentityChinese TraditionPersonal ExperienceFamilyStories
In practice
Example use cases
In a talk about cultural identity, one could quote this to illustrate the challenges faced by individuals in understanding their heritage.
More from Maxine Hong Kingston
All quotes →There can't be a pure myth, especially when the myth has been handed down in the oral tradition. As the stories are told, they change. If the stories don't change they just die.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
In a time of destruction, create something.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
Joy and life exist nowhere but the present.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
We're all under the same sky and walk the same earth; we're alive together during the same moment.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
Maxine Hong KingstonRead
Similar quotes
I have always been very proud of my Jewish heritage, which has greatly influenced my music, my world view, and my work as an advocate for individuals whom society often leaves behind.
Itzhak PerlmanRead
Enshrined in a language is the whole of a community's history and a large part of its cultural identity. The world is a mosaic of visions. To lose even one piece of this mosaic is a loss for all of us.
David CrystalRead
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
Jacques BarzunRead
I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.
Marcus SamuelssonRead
Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society
Edward Burnett TylorRead
The gitano is the most distinguished, profound and aristocratic element in my country, the one that most represents its Way of being and best preserves the fire, the blood and the alphabet of Andalusian and universal truth.
Federico Garcia LorcaRead