The police didn't afford you a phone call. You just disappeared for a while. And what was scary was we lived in a state where some people disappeared forever.

Living with my mom, I saw how she used language to cross boundaries, handle situations, navigate the world.

I knew of like - I remember, for most of my life, I grew up, and "Knight Rider" was, you know - David Hasselhoff was a Dutch character in my world.

The police didn't afford you a phone call. You just disappeared for a while. And what was scary was we lived in a state where some people disappeared forever.

Those were the places where many people mixed if they wanted to mix, which was against the law [Immorality Act of 1927]. My mother was part of that group. My father was part of that group. People who were black and whites and Indian and Asian - and you came together and said, we choose to mix at the risk of being arrested. And so they did.

[Languages] became a tool that served me my whole life.

Even now in America, you know, when people say they hate immigrants, they're not referring to a Canadian immigrant. You know, they're not referring to somebody who has an accent who's slightly different to theirs.