In America, where no one judged or supervised her, where my father was too busy eating her cooking to notice whether she was eating it, too, my mother found herself newly enchanted by the taste of food. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
My mother grew up strong. She was a charismatic leader among her peers, staging plays, organizing projects, raising money for charity; she was fiercely protective of her younger brother, with whom she shared a passion for jazz and rock and roll. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
For our family, learning was everything. Homework came first; books, being sacred, were never to be left on the floor. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
I will not concede for a moment that old privileges should not dwindle. They cannot dwindle fast enough. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
Language is one of the only things that we truly share, and I sometimes used this joint inheritance to obfuscate and deflect and justify myself: to re-brand what was good for me as something appearing good for us both, when I threw around terms like ‘the sharing economy’ and ‘disruption’ and ‘global resourcing.’ Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
It requires some intelligent reframing to make people see commonalities that they don’t otherwise see. To me, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are, in many ways, saying the same thing, but it requires a bit of imagination to get people to see that. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
I have a weakness for treating people’s economic interests as their only interest, ignoring things like belonging and pride and the desire to send a message to those who ignore you. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
I have always found it jarring to encounter people born and raised in, say, Switzerland, who are denied its citizenship and still considered Algerians or Turks. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
I’m a son of immigrants. I’m not going to reduce my commitment to immigration. But can I empathize with the fact that if your town was 95 percent all white and now it’s down to 60, that that can scare you? Can I empathize with that? Yeah. Anand Giridharadas Read Quote
