A Quote by Laila Lalami

Few [books] get translated and the ones that do have trouble making it into the mainstream. It's more likely that Americans will discover another culture through an American writer rather read a writer from that culture.

Laila Lalami

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American American Writer Another Books Culture Discover Few Get Likely Mainstream Making More Rather Read Through Translated Trouble Trouble Making Will Writer

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Laila Lalami
American - Novelist
Born: 1968

I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

Isabel Allende

I've never translated more than one book by any author. But I'm fascinated by translators who have, like Richard Zenith, who's translated so much of Fernando Pessoa's work. I get restless for a new kind of influence. The books I've translated are books I want to learn from as a writer, to be intoxicated by. And translation is an act of writing in itself. It's an act of recreation - of a writer's cadence and tone and everything that distinguishes the voice in the book.

Idra Novey

Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.

Pat Buchanan

It's insane to be a writer and not be a reader. When I'm writing I'm more likely to be reading four or five books at once, just in bits and pieces rather than subjecting myself to a really brilliant book and thinking, "Well what's the point of me writing anything?" I'm more likely to read a book through when I take a break from writing.

Markus Zusak

People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the whole culture and makes it richer and more interesting. I think if we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then we will be in a position where all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger.

Barack Obama

Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. I'm a writer who's been strongly influenced by European precedents. I'm a writer who feels very close to literary practice in India - which I go to quite often - and to writers over there.

Teju Cole

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

Reinhold Messner

Canadians are fond of darker stories, serious stories, so if you're a Mystery writer or a Romance writer or Fantasy Writer, you will most likely have an American publisher and agent.

Eden Robinson

I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it's] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture.

Michael Emerson

Be wary of feeling as through there is not enough room at the table. Oftentimes a female Chinese-American might feel as through she is in competition with another Chinese-American woman writer of the same generation. A writer friend of mine calls it the "There Can Only Be One ..." syndrome. This isn't "Survivor." The more good writers, of all walks of life and all ethnicities and persuasions, the better.

ZZ Packer

But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul.

Andre Dubus

Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency

Edward Hirsch

We should never denigrate any other culture but rather help people to understand the relationship between their own culture and the dominant culture. When you understand another culture or language, it does not mean that you have to lose your own culture.

Edward T. Hall

I am a writer and the greatest compliment I can get is to know that I've contributed language to the culture, that I've defined something, given it a name. So I think that is one of the great things a writer can do.

Chuck Palahniuk

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

Douglas Rushkoff

A Quote by Laila Lalami

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