Ruth Behar Quotes

But wherever I go, I know I will feel most at home with the wounded of the world, who hold their heads up high no matter how broken they may seem.

Pain is pain. Speak up. Tell your story. (Author's Note)

When we lived in Cuba, I was smart. But when we got to Queens, in New York City, in the United States of America, I became dumb, just because I couldn't speak English. (first lines)

I often say that I am Jewish because I am Cuban. I feel gratitude toward Cuba because my four grandparents found refuge there in the years before WW II at a time when the door was closed to them in the United States. If not for the welcome they received in Cuba, I would not have been born. My family came to love Cuba. When we left in the 1960s, to start a new life again in the United States after the turn to communism, it was with great sorrow. My family lived through a double exodus, a double migration, from Europe to Cuba, and then from Cuba to the United States. If we had not been given refuge twice, we would not have survived. Knowing that my ancestors fled persecution and genocide, I believe we should be compassionate and humane toward immigrants and foster policies of welcome, kindness, and generosity of spirit.

Healing is a journey and it takes its own sweet time. What a gift it is to get a second chance at life when the worst is past. (Author's Note)

I step out, legs trembling a little but my heart full, and set forth on the next journey, entrusting myself to the beauty and danger of life all over again. (Author's Note)

In my children’s fiction, I also want to teach them ideas. I don’t want them just to have a story: I’m giving somebody who perhaps knows nothing about Sephardic Jews a sense of that culture. Even if it is a preliminary sense, it’s an affirmation that this culture and these people exist. In that way, I’m bringing my ethnographic work even into a domain like the picture book.

That is the magic of writing, and also the challenge of writing, not knowing what will happen until it’s on the page.

“The only way to deal with fear is to treat it like an unwelcome guest. If you keep entertaining it, you’ll never be rid of it.” (Amara)

reading is one of our greatest human treasures, to be passed on from generation to generation, so the world might be a better place for everyone. (Acknowledgements)

I think the most fundamental thing we can do to make the world a better place is to be open to the stories of people, to listen and take in the lived experiences of others. Stories have the power to change the world. Understanding the hopes and dreams of another person, we learn that we are all connected, and that to nurture all of our communities, our families, and our individual lives we must nurture one another.

Being alive is the best gift of all. (p139)

“Why is it that bad things have to happen so you learn there are lots of good people in the world?" (Ruthie)

self-interrogation is a special quality of anthropological work, one that we don’t see enough of in fiction. Sometimes in fiction, authors hide or erase the work and interrogation that they may have done to be able to write their novels. But in ethnography, we often include that interrogation within our texts. And to me, that’s an inspiring part of our storytelling.

"I think if your dreams are small they can get lost, like trying to find a needle in a haystack...When a dream is big, you can see it better and hold on to it." (Ruthie)