I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It’s hard because you have to decide what to throw out.

The worst… was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people’s civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

There is also an epidemic of infertility in this country. There are more women who have put off child-bearing in favor of their professional lives. For them, the only way they are going to have a family is to adopt from China.

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.

Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren’t as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.

I may attempt a novel. I think that no matter what you write, it requires being honest with oneself, and you have to pull yourself out of the whirlwind of daily life.

Often, what you see in the media is driven by economic forces.

There isn’t much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

It was clear that the special interest groups in California really wanted the Chinese to be shut out of the country, because that was where the racial tension was the greatest.

There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force – then there could very well be a backlash.

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it’s hard to find out when one slides into another.

I don’t mind solitude. I love talking to other people, but I do need my space.

It’s much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it’s hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn’t have thought of before.

If the conditions were right there could be great acceptance. Often it is only when they pose an economic or political threat that it turns really ugly.

I have to finish this book tour of almost 30 cities.

There isn’t much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.

I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.

We have to keep in mind that it’s not just about the numbers of people who died; it’s also the manner which many of these victims met their deaths.

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

When the Chinese first came to San Francisco, they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them-again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese.

The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

It is very difficult to hang onto the relics of history.

Now, most of the new immigrants coming to this country are from Asia as opposed to Europe.

It’s a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.