Me Thinks

I am getting behind on posting about books I have read.  Here are three books I liked and quotes from each:

Legal status is, of course, an invisible trait.  In multi-ethnic America, is impossible to know whether someone is a United States-born citizen, a naturalized immigrant, a legal permanent resident, a visa holder, or an undocumented immigrant by simply appraising their appearance (pg. 94).

More than other immigration issues, the fate of undocumented children perhaps represented best the torn heart of immigration policy and politics in the United States over the past two decades (pg. 100).

 

 

Along the same lines, I have found that if we feed the unconscious, it will discover connections between what may appear to be disparate realities.  The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another—the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions (pg. 85).

It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.  Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious, creative components of our hidden potential (pg. 123).

Instead of running from our emotions or being swept away by their initial gusts, we should learn to sit with them, become at peace with their unique flavors, and ultimately discover deep pools of inspiration.  I have found that this is a natural process.  Once we build our tolerance for turbulence and are no longer upended by the swells of our emotional life, we can ride them and even pick up speed with their slopes (pg. 211).

 

A lot of people think that Chinese people are smarter.  No, they are not smarter.  They’re paying attention and they do their homework.  You look at the regular kids, and it’s not that they’re dumb; it’s just that they don’t put in as much effort (pg. 82).

Despite decades of institutional discrimination and racial prejudice, Asian Americans have seen their racial status change from unassimilable to exceptional, most notably in the domain of education (pg. 116).

Stereotypes are widely held, oversimplified, fixed images or ideas of particular groups (pg. 123). Stereotype promise leads to attitudes and actions (pg. 126). Teacher’s positive stereotypes of Asian American students can change the behavior of even some of the most mediocre students (pg. 127).