Ellen

“That's not how stories work, is it? They are shifting things that re-form with each new telling, transform with each new teller. Less solid, and more liquid taking the shape of its container.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“One characteristic of racism is that children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children. Watching a parent being debased like a child is the deepest shame. I cannot count the number of times I have seen my parents condescended to or mocked by white adults. This was so customary that when my mother had any encounter with a white adult, I was always hypervigilant, ready to mediate or pull her away. To grow up Asian in America is to witness the humiliation of authority figures like your parents and to learn not to depend on them: they cannot protect you.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“When you grow up in a country like the United States, you’re constantly told it’s the greatest place in the world. But then you go somewhere else one day and find out that bathroom doors like this exist, and you start to question everything.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing

“It's a sad thing when you map the borders of a friendship and find it's a narrower country than expected.”
― Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing