yen

“Impermanence can also be a gift. Create nothing lasting. Leave nothing behind. Live for the present. In beauty, until it ends." Jacques exhaled smoke thoughtfully. "In Latin, cadere means to fall: It's the root of 'decadent.' Not as we think of the word now, but a beautiful way to fall. A slow fall, willingly. Like fashion. It never lasts, but for the time it's there, the beauty of it is something we'd die for, though we can never hold on to it.”
― C. W. Gortner

“To live as a minoritized, nonwhite person in this country is to exist in a perpetual state of shame... You will never belong, You will never be enough, You will never be American—by which, we mean you will never be white”
― Julia Lee

“One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation”
― Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

“To be an Asian person in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of shame almost all of the time”
― Julia Lee