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

Growing up in the U.S., I was certainly deeply aware of the power of American media, specifically Hollywood and television, in terms of broadcasting a particular vision of what the American experience was like. As someone coming from a war that was a preoccupation of Americans in the 1980s, it did strike me that since we were a part of that war, we should have a chance to talk about ourselves.

I've never stopped being a refugee.

In the United States, we want to believe we will never become a country of refugees.

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

People might like to think a war is done when a cease fire is signed, but for most people who lived through a war it goes on for decades.

Hollywood in many ways serves as the unofficial ministry of propaganda for the United States.