There is a refusal to understand that an American can look like one of us and doesn't have to be white. (1989) - Maxine Hong Kingston

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)

From the fairy tales, I've learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them-business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye. (p48)

it's like a habit. I have to eat, I have to breathe, I have to write.