8 quotes
Literature can help bring about change of hearts and minds and then put pressure for political, legislative change. (2007)
Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political pamphlet. (1996)
An author focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes across to the reader. (1996)
I was born into a class that did not live in its native language. I was born into a city that feared its future, and trained me for emigration.
A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)
I believe that if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself to is your heritage to claim
or reject. (from 1996 interview)
The most moving form of praise I receive from readers can be summed up in three words: I never knew. Meaning, I see these people (call them Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese) around me all the time and I never knew they had an inner life.
A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)
my true material is immigration. In other words, transformation not preservation.
A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)
My theme is the making of new Americans
A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)