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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

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Andrew Lam
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: January 1
Businessperson
Writer
Republic of Vietnam
Changed
Enchantment
Voice
Shattered
Language
Wow
Thought
Fell
Never
Believed
Like
English
Magic
Months
Physiologically

More quotes by Andrew Lam

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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?
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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.
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I always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.
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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.
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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
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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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In non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national .
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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.
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I am hopeful that the pendulum swings toward seeing immigrants in favorable terms once more.
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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.
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Precious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.
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I think in a larger sense, immigrant narrative is comprehensive and speaks to the core of human experience.
Andrew Lam
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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
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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.
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I've been writing short stories for twenty years now, on and off ever since I was in the creative writing program at San Francisco State University.
Andrew Lam
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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
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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
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America's story is largely an immigrant story. That hasn't changed since the Pilgrims ate their first turkey some four hundred years ago, and they were the original boat people.
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It's unfortunate that the country of immigrants has turned its back on immigrants. The atmosphere after 9/11 is toxic.
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Art is the lesser sister to medicine. It aims to heal.
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