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As a Vietnamese refugee who became an American writer, I can tell you that you matter, that your sadness matters, the story of how you survived and triumphed matters. For every story that belongs to you, in time, belongs to America.
Andrew Lam
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Andrew Lam
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Businessperson
Writer
Republic of Vietnam
American
Refugee
Tell
Survived
Stories
Belongs
America
Sadness
Matter
Matters
Every
Became
Time
Writer
Triumphed
Story
Vietnamese
More quotes by Andrew Lam
After twenty years and thirty stories, thirteen pieces were finally selected and the collection was born. So far, the blurbs from [authors] Maxine Hong Kingston, Gish Jen, Robert Olen Butler, Oscar Hijuelos and others, have been most encouraging.
Andrew Lam
I have a funny story to tell about English and how I came to fall in love with the language. I was desperate to fit in and spoke English all the time. Trouble was, in my household it was a no-no to speak English because somehow it is disrespectful to call parents and grandparents you - impersonal pronouns are offensive in Vietnamese.
Andrew Lam
That experience of losing home, longing for home, that yearning for meaning and rootedness and identity in a floating world, it's what often makes an immigrant story into an American story .
Andrew Lam
When a well-rounded character takes over, he doesn't lecture you about his history and how he is misunderstood. He lives his life, does things that are unexpected, and makes you laugh and cry because of his human flaws and foibles.
Andrew Lam
The collection is a labor of love and devotion, and whenever I found free time from my journalism work, I'd work on one story or another, or at least sketch out my characters, and research various issues related to my characters' dilemmas.
Andrew Lam
Isn't the first story told in the West about the Fall? Adam and Eve were immigrants too from somewhere, a lost Eden, a paradise lost. We all now are so mobile, so nomadic .
Andrew Lam
In non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national .
Andrew Lam
Though I later found a career as a journalist and an essayist, fiction is my first love and I never left it, even though there was no easy way to make a living from it.
Andrew Lam
[The immigrant] becomes a kind of insurance policy against the effects of the recession. By blaming him, the pressure valve is regulated in times of crisis ... What we have now is a public mindset of us versus them, and an overall anti-immigrant climate that is both troubling and morally reprehensible.
Andrew Lam
Where are the leaders who can speak to the idea that it is not alien to American interests, but very much in our socioeconomic interests - not to mention our spiritual health - to integrate immigrants, that our nation functions best when we welcome newcomers and help them participate fully in our society?
Andrew Lam
In the war on terrorism, the immigrant is often the scapegoat.
Andrew Lam
I always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.
Andrew Lam
Precious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.
Andrew Lam
Missing from the national conversation are voices of pro-immigration reformers and civil rights leaders, who can speak on behalf of those who have no voice.
Andrew Lam
I thought, Wow, English is like magic. It not only shattered my voice, it changed me physiologically. I believed this for months ... There's magic in the language. I never fell out of the enchantment.
Andrew Lam
I am glad to see the wheels are moving at last toward comprehensive immigration reform after last year's election. I am glad that immigrants are speaking up.
Andrew Lam
All three of my books, Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres, and Birds of Paradise Lost, are immigrant narratives - their dreams, their traumas, their struggles - and I write them with the confidence that these stories, written from the heart, will belong, in time, to Americ
Andrew Lam
It's unfortunate that the country of immigrants has turned its back on immigrants. The atmosphere after 9/11 is toxic.
Andrew Lam
Today, more people are crossing various borders in order to survive, thrive, change their lives. Even if you don't cross the border, with demographic shifts, the border sometimes crosses you.
Andrew Lam
Art is the lesser sister to medicine. It aims to heal.
Andrew Lam
