Three important quotes from Chapter 6?

Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men...Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned—because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life."

Chapter 6, paragraph 1

"Maybe it really was that simple for him. I imagined my father sitting at his desk in Nairobi, a big man in government, with clerks and secretaries bringing him papers to sign, a minister calling him for advice, a loving wife and children waiting at home, his own father's village only a day's drive away. The image made me vaguely angry, and tried to set it aside"

"Hawaii lay behind me like a childhood dream; I could no longer imagine settling there"

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