It was always a false assumption that white American writers cannot write novels about race unless they're approaching it from a very oblique angle. Jess Row More Quotes by Jess Row More Quotes From Jess Row The truth is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point. Jess Row hard-work kind intellectual I've spent my entire adult life teaching at colleges of various kinds, all of them very different from Yale, and I have a fairly cynical perspective on what elite institutions - and the privileges they embody - represent in America. Jess Row perspective college teaching Yale's endowment became a metaphor for the kind of training it offered its graduates, namely, how to exploit the global marketplace, and technology, for your own interests, while maintaining a smokescreen of virtuous intent. Jess Row graduates training technology Because of all the cosmetic services like skin whitening and hair bleaching, there is a lot that people can do to change their appearance without having actual surgery. It's quite common in Thailand and Korea and Japan. Jess Row korea japan hair There's an enormous difference between normative white masculinity and normative black masculinity. Jess Row black differences white There's been a lot of talk about black men and the presence and absence of black men in positions of power in American culture. Jess Row position-of-power black men You think about every piece of idiomatic speech adopted by white men over the past ten or twenty years; virtually all of it comes from hip-hop. Jess Row men past thinking There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense. Jess Row pessimistic quiet people The politics of transgender identity are really complicated. And the debate over how much of gender is biological and how much of it is socially constructed is a very complex debate. Jess Row debate identity complicated I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender. Jess Row race identity people For me, there's a very clear parallel between the practice of insight in Buddhism and what's called prajna - the insight that arrives through meditation. Jess Row buddhism meditation practice Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives. Jess Row karma way world Narrative stories are nothing but models of karma and causality - how one thing leads to another. And a lot of narrative fiction is about causality that we don't immediately understand. Jess Row karma stories fiction Hong Kong has been the place where the memory of Tiananmen Square lives on; Hong Kong people have become more and more committed in their resistance to authoritarian government, and also, not surprisingly, committed to safeguarding their culture and heritage as something distinct and worth preserving. Jess Row government squares memories The gestures and the swagger and the attitude of black men is imitated everywhere in American culture, but people still find black men intolerable. Jess Row attitude men people Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock. Jess Row indie-rock rocks hip-hop Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it. Jess Row black culture people Only when you leave do you appreciate what binds American people and our cultural experience together. Jess Row appreciate together people The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate. Jess Row impact appreciate art It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is. Jess Row steps culture
