A Quote by Sufjan Stevens
Growing up on the border there, we were always frustrated with people's pronunciations of towns in Michigan, and people mispronouncing Illinois. There are all these Native American words that no one really knows how to pronounce.
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I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.
Growing up in Georgia, I used to think people up north or out west were so different. They're really not. They're just regular people who live in small towns. They grow up and try to raise families and have a job and go to church and play softball. It's that way everywhere.
You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.
You know how Mexican restaurants always have "border" in the name: Border Grill, Border Cafe. You wouldn't do that to black people: Kunta's Kitchen or Shackles. They don't do it to white people. You don't see the Honkey Grill, the Cracker Barrel... oh, nevermind.
Growing up, everybody would cross the border, even to just do grocery shopping. A lot of traditional American foods stuck with my parents and became part of my upbringing. This all had to do with the proximity to the border. We were an absolute mix of classic Americana, traditional Mexican, and Baja cuisine.
When you start to look at Native American history, you realize that, very far from being a peaceful, morally superior people, Native Americans were not that different from Europeans.
Growing up with Jennifer Lopez and Salma Hayek - people who were always trying to do something else - I wanted to follow in their footsteps. They gave people a different perspective of how women were supposed to look like and be.
I was so embarrassed about mispronouncing words. I just knew how to smile.
Growing up, I always saw the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. The history speaks for itself, and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words.
Native Americans were driven off their land. Lincoln even took part in the Black Hawk campaign against the Native Americans in Illinois. While they were being exterminated and driven off their land, Whites were collecting assets.
The Internet, the network of networks, is growing at an exponential pace. It's growing so fast, in fact, nobody really knows how many people use the Internet.
A big piece of my heart is definitely in Michigan and will always be in Michigan. Growing up there is definitely a big part of who I am as a person.
All my friends were doing just dumb stuff that kids do, like making out with people at parties and starting to date... I didn't know any gay people growing up or any queer people growing up, and so I just really felt alone and kind of lost, and I just wasn't experiencing life.
I grew up in Illinois. If you were in Chicago, you were a Democrat. You get out to the suburbs and central Illinois, you're a Republican.
People get tired of talking about American exceptionalism, but I think this is an extraordinary thing about the United States, that we are a nation of immigrants, first of all, that is built upon a pluralistic society of native people that were here to begin with. The issue of diversity is really with us from the beginning.
In the case of European towns, the passing of centuries provides an enhancement; in the case of American towns, the passing of years brings degeneration. It is not simply that they have been newly built; they were built so as to be renewable as quickly as they were put up, that is, badly.
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