They think that Americans are either white or Black. I can't wear that civil-rights button with the Black hand and the white hand shaking each other. I have a nightmare-after duking it out, someday Blacks and whites will shake hands over my head. I'm the little yellow man beneath the bridge of their hands and overlooked. (p307)
Download Image Share on X Share on Facebook

About This Quote

About Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston was a contemporary American american author and teacher. Maxine Hong Kingston is an American novelist. She is a professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated in 1962 with a B.A. Read more on Wikipedia →

More quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston

“The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
inspirational motivational work

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
creation destruction hope life

“Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
chinese-american feminine-identity feminism

“Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which dont sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that floa...”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
hawaii immensity joy ocean

“This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a ...”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
books reading

“It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They g...”
— Maxine Hong Kingston
books reading
View all quotes by Maxine Hong Kingston →