A Quote by Ramy Youssef
I think that a lot of the stories I would see was kids who are first-generation immigrants, watching them try to rip themselves from their family and their faith and kind of erase. I hadn't really seen anything where someone's trying to reconcile the two.
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The stories I always see about a first-generation kid trying to erase where they came from, or trying to just be white, I would watch those shows or movies and I was like, 'I don't get this.' This isn't how I feel.
The question that comes up a lot is, if you had the chance to erase your memory of something specific, what would you erase? And my answer has always been, I wouldn't erase anything, personally. In some ways, I almost wouldn't want to erase anything from the public consciousness, either, for the same reason.
I see a lot of people who have amazing stories but have been told that their work, their lives, and their stories and not the stuff of literature. Or they're first-generation college student, first-generation American, and their family just doesn't understand the art world. They have a lot of guilt. "We came all the way from [wherever] so you could do this?" Those people may not be showing the moxie, but that's because they don't even know what's possible. So I want to jump in and say, "Actually, your story is amazing, and I believe in you.".
Because work takes up a lot of time, you have to choose your moments for really letting rip. I hang out with my friends and my family and I spend time with my kids when I'm not working. They don't see my being an actor as exotic. For them, it's just an everyday thing. Sometimes it's amusing to them and other times, embarrassing.
The first week I was in Iraq, I said, "This is what I want to do. I want to be a reporter and to tell stories of people whose stories would not be told if we don't gather them." It's part of what I think of as the one-two punch of journalism. You're trying to give voice to the voiceless, and then you're also trying to hold those in power accountable, regardless of what party they're in.
When people see Barack Obama, they don't necessarily see an African-American president. They see someone who is a child of immigrants. They see someone whose family has worked hard and struggled. And they see many similarities between themselves and Barack Obama.
I usually make up stories for my kids.I like to tell them stories and make up any kind of crazy to involve them in characters. The kind of fairytales I don't like are the ones with happy endings, where there's just good and evil and things are perfect. I think when there's a good story for children it has a moral tale, so that's what I try to teach my kids.
I try to use the attention that I get to help and to serve, and that's really what I'd see as my work - to serve my community, serve the planet, serve my family. And I think a celebrity is someone who draws the attention on themselves, and then it kind of stops there.
New Brown America represents a whole generation of kids that are descendants of either immigrants or immigrants themselves, that are coming to America, enriching what it means to be an American.
I go to a lot of independents and foreign films. I really try to keep up and see what there is to see. If you really love movies, it's the act of watching them that you really love. You can sit and watch a B-Western and have just as much fun watching that as you can a classic. That minute when the lights go down is the part where the magic happens, because you know this could be great. You're always kind of excited, like, "Here I am again in the church of movies, and Mass is starting.".
I think you have to embrace being a role model because you are in the public eye, and whether you like it or not, people are going to be affected by you positively or negatively, ... Public-wise, I really wouldnt do anything that would be detrimental to anybody else or to myself. And to a certain extent, I try to watch out and try not to do anything that would be bad for kids to see.
Raising kids these days is hard. I'm the second to last child in my family. I think it's tough; I have two kids, I see them and I feel like I see things in them; they awaken the inner child in you.
I want to be known as someone who got caught trying. Yup. Trying to make communities that didn't think much of themselves see themselves as fabulous, powerful, beautiful, loving, kind, members of this world. That's what I want people to say about me.
I definitely think my ancestry has something to do with my politics. And I think being deeply suspicious of government and communists is implicit in a lot of first-generation immigrants, particularly from Eastern Europe. My mom came over from Romania when she was a kid and they fled the commies who took their family hemp farm.
I think a lot of the way that I try to write my stories come from watching my mom write plays and trying to do that.
I'm always trying to tell fans to love themselves. I see them going through a ton of hardships on Twitter and being bullied. It's really important and easier said than done to take care of yourself. A lot of people put themselves out for others and don't really think about mending themselves. Sometimes, they get a little lost that way.
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