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Farewell to Manzanar

 Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston
 

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.
 
 
 
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