Bicultural Quotes

“She was right. After all, if she herself had wondered whether she was Indian enough -- she, who had always been to me a sort of epitome of Indian -- then who could be? Who could claim the sole right or way to an identity?”
― Tanuja Desai Hidier, Born Confused

“In most black people, there is a South Side, a sense of home, that never leaves, and yet to compete in the world, we have to go forth. So we learn to code-switch and become bilingual. We save our Timberlands for the weekend, and our jokes for the cats in the mail room. Some of us give ourselves up completely and become the mask, while others overcompensate and turn every dustup into the Montgomery bus boycott.
But increasingly, as we move into the mainstream, black folks are taking a third road -- becoming ourselves.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

“The speaker was good, I liked what he had to say. I had expected a dry recitation on how women should change their gender if they expected to advance in a man's world, since I wasn't about to grow a cock and balls this man gave me hope and inspiration. Women dominated the audience, not surprising since the average African man wouldn’t support a speaker preaching gender equality. Africa was a continent with generational precedent for the alpha male, it was part of their culture, learned at an early age. This led to abuse on many levels. Women were expected to do the physical work, produce male babies and satisfy the sexual urgings of men. Urgings that in other societies would be called rape but in Africa were accepted as common practice. I understood this better than most. Pictures of the Kony boy-soldiers and their adult commander were burned into my memory.”
― Nick Hahn, Under the Skin

“When we cross borders culturally, we experience some alienation from our own culture and gain an objective perspective toward our own culture at the same time. A bicultural individual comes to identify home as a culture outside his or her original identity, and may vacillate in commitment and loyalty to both cultures.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering

“One participant described her frustration when she joined the Asian American Association in high school: 'I totally did not fit in...It kind of made me mad because I looked like them, so I felt like I identified with them, but once I got in, I learned I really don't at all.' Caught between the expectations of two groups, [transracial adoptees] often felt rejected by White people due to physical differences and by people of their birth ethnicity due to lack of language and cultural knowledge.”
― Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

“In Ugandan society a girl who had reached puberty was eligible for a family-arranged marriage. The groom would bring wealth to the bride’s family in the form of cattle, goats, or land. My experience at the hands of Joseph Kony’s murderers and rapists had made a mockery of this custom. I hated the idea, and my father understood.”
― Nick Hahn, Under the Skin

“I’ve now come...to not only accept my bicultural identity (which I’d spent my entire life running from, in order to ‘fit in’ better just in one category) but actually to be empowered by my duality.”
― Selin Senol-Akin, Set Free Your Flow: A Centered View

“The matted straw cover of the latrine was yanked away. The sun blinded me as I looked up at the dark outline of two young soldiers in tattered camouflage, their uniforms made for men bigger than they were. They each held an automatic weapon, an AK-47, and were leering down at me. I could see the two gold teeth of one of them as he grinned.
Gold-tooth reached down and grabbed my hair, yanking me up by it until he could get the other hand under my arm and pull me the rest of the way. I screamed in terror. He pulled me away from the pit as he and the others held their noses and laughed hysterically. One held each arm and dragged me to the river’s edge. They tore off my loose cotton dress; I had no underwear on. After howling with laughter and firing guns in the air, they crudely touched my body.”
― Nick Hahn, Under the Skin

“You can take a little bit of the East and a little bit of the West, and create a formulaic soup in life that works best for you: no one else has to drink it if they don’t like”
― Selin Senol-Akin, Set Free Your Flow: A Centered View

“I was raised smack in the middle of the storm where East and West would often clash, just like my dreams.”
― Selin Senol-Akin, Set Free Your Flow: A Centered View