A Quote by Paula Gunn Allen
... America has amnesia. ... Certainly, there is a passion for memory loss in American thought. ... Americans may be the world champion forgetters.
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It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.
And I thought my loss my loss was not, certainly, the end of the world, but to lessen the enthusiasm of those young people who were signed up, I thought that was tragic.
Memory in America suffers amnesia.
Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America.
The memory of what is not may be better than the amnesia of what is.
And I thought my loss was not, certainly, the end of the world, but to lessen the enthusiasm of those young people who were signed up, I thought that was tragic.
I’m American. I can’t stand Brazilians. They live in a third-world country anyway, so they’ll go anywhere if there’s a little money. I live in America. I want to be a champion of an American organization.
I talk about my dad and the American dream, and I just want to say to Americans how fascinated we are by America. We would love Americans to look at the rest of the world that way sometimes.
Memory is a slippery thing. When something terrible happens to you, like the loss of someone you love...memory can turn into a soft blanket that hides you from the loss.
Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.
Now, we have inscribed a new memory alongside those others. It's a memory of tragedy and shock, of loss and mourning. But not only of loss and mourning. It's also a memory of bravery and self-sacrifice, and the love that lays down its life for a friend-even a friend whose name it never knew.
There is nothing antithetical in American history, culture, or traditions to teamwork. Teams were important in America's history - wagon trains conquered the West, men working together on the assembly line in American industry conquered the world, a successful national strategy and a lot of teamwork put an American on the moon first (and thus fare, last). But American mythology extols only the individual...In America, halls of fame exist for almost every conceivable activity, but nowhere do Americans raise monuments in praise of teamwork.
In North America, what happens often is that they put race before nationhood. Everyone here is Hispanic-American, Chinese-American, African-American. But really, we're just North Americans of all these different descents. The only time I notice North Americans becoming national is when a war happens or a crisis happens.
American sports are quite masculine. And football - although it's still played by men all over the world - football compared to American football is quite feminine in its artistry. And there's no padding. It's America's loss, though.
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.
Outside of America, there are many people, myself included, who champion values that in some senses could be thought of as traditionally American: The idea that everybody is equal; the idea that the rights of women and men should be the same.
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