Iris Chang Quotes
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Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.
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After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
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I have friends who are Caucasian who have pitched ideas for a Chinese-American show, and there is great resistance in Hollywood and the networks to support that.
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Often what is deeply offensive to Chinese-Americans that they are really well-represented in medicine, and yet on all these doctors' shows you hardly see any Chinese-American faces.
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Not only do people go into Chinese restaurants, but people are more likely to work with other Chinese-Americans, more likely to marry them.
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It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.
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I don't mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.
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The Committee of 100 commissioned a survey in which they found that Asian-American candidates are the most unpopular of all the races. They found that people were less likely to vote for Chinese-Americans than other minorities.
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It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.
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When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.
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I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.
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I have to finish this book tour of almost 30 cities.
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Congressman David Woo, when he wanted to give a speech at the Department of Energy-ironically to celebrate Asian History month-they stopped him. They wouldn't let him in. This was shortly after the Wen Ho Lee scandal.
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There is a perception that the Chinese started out downtrodden and abused in the 19th century and gradually rose to the top of society as model minorities, and you see them winning Nobel Prizes and getting into our best colleges. But it is not a linear progression. Things don't always get better.
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I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.
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Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.
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When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.
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As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.
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Even if you wanted to be a hermit, people come out looking for you. I don't want to cloister myself away, but it is important for me to write about issues that have universal significance. One of them that have resonated with me all my life has been the theme of injustice.
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Some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided that they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat.
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Please believe in THE POWER OF ONE. One person can make an enormous difference in the world. One person - actually, one idea - can start a war, or end one, or subvert an entire power structure. One discovery can cure a disease or spawn new technology to benefit or annihilate the human race. You as ONE individual can change millions of lives. Think big. Do not limit your vision and do not ever compromise your dreams or ideals.
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Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.
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I started off majoring in math and computer science and then majored in journalism because I knew I wanted to become a writer one day.
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This by no means the last word on the Chinese in America. This is my personal interpretation of the 150-year epic history of Chinese in this country.