Quotes | transnationalborders

Quotes on Migration and Identity

In the following you will find quotes both chosen by the authors of this page, and submitted from transnational subjects whom identify with the passages. These quotes, drawn from literature, interviews, and personal experiences, exemplify the experience of migration and navigating life between borders.

In Literature

Amulet

by Roberto Bolaño

“My name is Auxilio Lacouture and I am Uruguayan--I come from Montevideo--although when I get nostalgic, when homesickness wells up and overwhelms me, I say I’m a Charrua, which is more or less the same thing, though not exactly, and it confuses Mexicans and other Latin Americans too.”

pp. 1

Axolotl Roadkill

by Helene Hegemann

“PS: …darling, there is no generally accepted hierarchy that covers all aspects of life. That’s a classic German fallacy. Of course you’re miles above me, but you know that already. I’m less than existent in German culture. But I don’t care about that. I’ll just let you have your world and you let me have mine.”

pp. 177

My Brother

by Jamaica Kincaid

“I could not have become a writer while living among the people I knew best, I could not have become myself while living among the people I knew best--and I only knew them best because I was from them, of them, and so often felt I was them--and they were--are--the people who ought to have loved me best in the whole world, the people who should have made me feel that the love of people other than them was suspect.”

pp.130

We Need New Names

a story about Zimbabwe

by NoViolet Bulawayo

“Look at them leaving in droves, the children of the land, just look at them leaving in droves. Those with nothing are crossing borders. Those with strength are crossing borders. Those with ambitions are crossing borders. Those with hopes are crossing borders. Those with loss are crossing borders. Those in pain are crossing borders. Moving, running, emigrating, going, deserting, walking, quitting, flying, fleeing--to all over, to countries near and far, to countries unheard of, to countries whose names they cannot pronounce. They are leaving in droves.”

pp. 170

Open City

by Teju Cole

“From where I stood, the Statue of Liberty was a flourescent green fleck against the sky, and beyond her sat Ellis Island, the focus of so many myths; but it had been built too late for those early Africans--who weren’t immigrants in any case--and it had been too closed too soon to mean anything to the later Africans like...the cabdriver, or me.”

pp. 84

Shadow Lines

by Amitav Ghosh

“This is the modern world. The border isn’t on the frontier: it’s right inside the airport. You’ll see. You’ll cross it when you have to fill in all those disembarkation cards and things.”

pp. 248

The Whale Caller

by Zakes Mda

“Hair. It is a blight they must carry on their heads, exposing the position each head occupied in the statutory hierarchies of the past. The troubles of humanity are locked in the hair. Yet the people have managed to disguise their shame by painting it in the colours that designate them all as a people of the rainbow. Without exception. Without a past. Without rancour. Without hierarchies. Only their eyes betray the big lie. In these eyes you can see a people living in a daze. Rainbow people walking in a precarious dream that may explode into a nightmare without much warning.”

pp. 29

Purple Hibiscus

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“[Papa] hardly spoke Igbo, and although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not like us to speak it in public. We had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English. Papa’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma, said once that Papa was too much of a colonial product.”

pp. 17

In Interviews

NoViolet Bulawayo

an interview by Justin Torres

“There are many Englishes out there. Mine is the English I arrive at through Ndebele, my native language from Zimbabwe; my English gets its pulse from my intimacy with another language.”

Emilia Cortés

Writer and professor from Albacete, Spain.

"A lo largo del tiempo, las ciudades por las que pasamos inciden en nuestra vida y establecen con nosotros una estrecha relación. La mayor parte de las veces esta incidencia no se produce con las ciudades en las que hemos nacido o en las que vayamos a morir; son otras intermedias en nuestra línea vital las que, sin saberlo, son testigo de los momentos de más calado en nuestra vida, en ellas se tejen los hilos finísimos y definitivos de nuestra existencia."

____________________________________________

"Throughout time, the cities we have been produces an impact in our lives and they establish a close relationship with us. Most of the time this incidence does not occur with the cities in which we were born or where we are going to die. There are others in between in our lifeline which, unknowingly, are testimonies of witnessed and deep moments in our lives and those include the finest and definitive threads woven of our existence".

German-Syrian Author Rafik Schami

an interview by Deutsche Welle

"The idea that you don't change when you have lived in a society - be it German, French or American - for 40 years is an illusion. You are not an island and neither is society. You live here, you feel at ease here and you keep to your deadlines here. I very much like being married to a German lady; I live here with her and our son had to go to school here. So it's not only the glasses with which I see the world that have become German - a part of my eye has become German too."

Cindy Ross

"Volver a casa es la parte más dificil del viaje: Has crecido fuera del rompecabezas y tu pieza ya no encaja".

__________________________________________________

"Coming home is the hardest part of the trip: You've grown out your piece of the puzzle and no longer fits."

Yoko Tawada

German-Japanese Author

On the untranslatability of her works

"Ja, genau. Man kann das gar nicht übersetzen. Ich hätte vieles gern mechanisch übersetzt. Das geht aber nicht. Es gibt große Unterschiede zwischen dem Japanischen und dem Deutschen oder anderer europäischen Sprachen. Der soziale Kontext, Gesten, Gewohnheiten, die Art und Weise, wie man mit den Leuten umgeht. Das ist alles anders. Das muss man alles mit übersetzen, sonst gibt es Missverständnisse. Das heißt, dass man alles essen und dann ausspucken muss."