“When I sought admission to graduate schools, when I applied for fellowships and summer study grants, when I needed a teaching assistantship, my Spanish surname or the dark mark in the space indicating my race—‘check one’—nearly always got me whatever I asked for.”
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)
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Richard Rodríguez 127
American journalist and essayist 1944Related quotes

Variant: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Sara Paxton on The Innkeepers, Shark Night 3-D and Julia Roberts Marathons (June 23, 2011)
Keynote speech, Wharton Global Modular Course, May 25, 2015. http://www.inside-rge.com/Sukanto-Tanoto-Entrepreneur-Journey-1
2015

Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)
Song lyrics, Music of My Mind (1972)

“I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother.”
[27 February 2005, http://clyburn.house.gov/statements/050227voucherplan.html, "Governor's Plan Seems Unconstitutional and Unconscionable", Representative Jim Clyburn, United States House of Representatives, 2007-07-24]

“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.”
"Keeping Things Whole" (1969)
Source: Selected Poems
Context: p>In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.</p

About the letters from Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010”