Important Quotations Explained
1. [Mama]
would quickly subordinate her own desires to those of the family
or the community, because she knew cooperation was the only way
to survive. At the same time she placed a high premium on personal
privacy, respected it in others and insisted upon it for herself.
â Almost everyone at Manzanar had inherited this pair of traits
from the generations before them who had learned to live in a small, crowded
country like Japan.”
2. “When
your mother and your father are having a fight, do you want them
to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting?”
3. I
smiled and sat down, suddenly aware of what being of Japanese ancestry
was going to be like. I wouldn't be faced with physical attack,
or with overt shows of hatred. Rather, I would be seen as someone
foreign, or as someone other than American, or perhaps not be seen
at all.
4. I
feel no malice toward this girl. I don't even envy her. Watching,
I am simply emptied, and in the dream I want to cry out, because
she is something I can never be, some possibility in my life that
can never be fulfilled.
5. Papa's
life ended at Manzanar.â Until this trip I had not been able to
admit that my own life really began there.
