No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

Immigrants who come to a country are going to lose something, for sure, but they hope to gain a great deal by making this journey, whereas refugees by definition have lost a tremendous amount - not just country and society, but also more personal things like careers, prestige, status, relatives, identities. This inevitably makes the longing to remember the past even more powerful among refugees, to the point of often debilitating them.

In the United States, the immigrant experience occupies a very central place in American mythology. And sometimes, that place wavers between acceptance and rejection.

If you're a so-called minority writer, the temptation is to write for the majority... I refuse to do that.

No one wants for their child to become a refugee. It's an awful experience.

Immigrants who voluntarily come to a country have already made a decision to assimilate to one degree or another. Probably not completely, but they've committed to the place, and they know that they need to make certain kinds of concessions. They change themselves in some way to fit in. They're looking forward as much as they're still looking backward.

Refugees are threatening, not just to Americans, but also in many countries the world over. And it's partially because, unlike immigrants, refugees do not choose where they're going to go or why they're fleeing, and they are unwanted populations. They bring with them the stigma of disaster.