Do I have to explain why 'exotic' pisses me off, and 'not exotic' pisses me off? They've got us in a bag… — Maxine Hong Kingston
Do I have to explain why 'exotic' pisses me off, and 'not exotic' pisses me off? They've got us in a bag, which we aren't punching our way out of. To be exotic or to be not-exotic is not a question about Americans or about humans. Okay, okay. Take me, for example. I'm common ordinary. Plain black sweater. Blue jeans. Tennis shoes ordinaire. Clean soo mun shaven. What's so exotic? My hair's too long, huh? Is that it? It's the hair? (p308)
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More from this book
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)
What's crazy is the idea that revolutionaries must shoot and bomb and kill, that revolution is the same as war. (p305)
He did too have a philosophy of life: Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path. Those coincidental people are your people. (p223)
