I'm a teacher, so much of what I'm doing remains in the abstract. But I also support a lot of educational initiatives that support kids to really get out there and work hard in their communities. But I also think that we need poets in our country to inspire.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Slow down and think about the lessons of the elders.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

You really need to love something or someone in order to work hard enough to be very successful. You have to believe in something and have a certain optimism. Faith and optimism come from love.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

I'm a teacher, so much of what I'm doing remains in the abstract. But I also support a lot of educational initiatives that support kids to really get out there and work hard in their communities. But I also think that we need poets in our country to inspire.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

We can't afford to live in isolation, and we need to teach our kids that the things that they do not only matter to others far away but impact others who live far away, and there are ripples of effect.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

My mother would have enjoyed the idea that her name was being used to build bridges. She cared a great deal and was very thoughtful and passionate about education and young women.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

One of the things that I have my students do is to take a look at English-language newspapers from all around the world in order to see the different ways in which the same story might be told.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

I've always kept a journal and brought storytelling into my teaching.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Barack himself is very much a regular guy, not a silver spoon, incredibly smart, but, you know, he's a scholarship kid, made good use of the resources that were available to him, worked incredibly hard.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

It was as a mother that I needed my mother back, and I needed to conjure her anew and think about what she would have counselled and what she would have given.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

This is not a family of privilege by any stretch of the imagination. Our family is very low key.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

I think we could benefit from world history that is specifically taught in a multi-faceted fashion that allows for an understanding that perspectives on truth can be very different.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

My father saw Islam as a way to connect with the community. He never went to prayer services except for big communal events. I am absolutely certain that my father did not go to services every Friday. He was not religious.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

I ended up very American and very Indonesian and a little bit of a lot of things.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

My mother was a courageous woman, and she had such tremendous love for life. She loved the natural world. She would wake us up in the middle of the night to go look at the moon. When I was a teenager, this was a source of great frustration because I wanted to sleep.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

I'm half white, half Asian. I think of myself as hybrid. People usually think I'm Latina when they meet me. That's what made me learn Spanish.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Philosophically, I would say that I am Buddhist.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

We can do much to help our communities loosen their boundaries and begin to welcome a multitude of ways of being to make sure that individuals of mixed race, religion, or ethnicities don't feel the need to choose one or the other but see their layers as a gift, something that adds beauty.

Maya Soetoro-Ng

Being told that I looked like I belonged everywhere and to everyone helped me feel my fledgling pride in my own multiracialism.

Maya Soetoro-Ng