My father was second-generation Chinese-American, born in 1923 in California. My mother emigrated to the States from China when she was in her early twenties, in part to escape the political turmoil in China.
I wanted to make a human monster. His name is Coffin Baby. The idea is based on a group of people from Pasadena whose names I can't mention. His mother died and during the funeral, this baby came out of her in the coffin.
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
I'm very grounded - that's how I would put it. If you met my mother, you'd probably say the same thing about her. I had a very sane upbringing, though some very insane things happened.
I'm not sure where I'm from! I was born in London. My father's from Ghana but lives in Saudi Arabia. My mother's Nigerian but lives in Ghana. I grew up in Boston.
For one year, I was Keith Mitchell Coogan on my headshots. The next year, I was just Keith Coogan. And I have gone by that ever since, maybe 1984 or 1985. That is my mother's maiden name, and it was out of reverence for my grandfather.
I was born Pauline Matthews and grew up in Bradford as one of three children - I had an older brother, David, and an older sister, Betty. My father Fred worked in the mills as a textile weaving supervisor, and my mother, Mary, was a housewife.
Burnout can be defined as a loss of enthusiasm, energy, idealism, perspective, and purpose; it has been described as trying to run a marathon at full speed. It's often the mothers who care the most who are the most prone to burnout.
There's an old joke about a mother watching a column of soldiers pass by. Her son is in the ranks. All those men out of step, she says, except our Fred.
One of the things I like about the show is it redefines the idea of what it is to be a mother, which at its most basic level is to take care of a child. It doesn't mean you have to look like the ladies in the Lysol commercials.
Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.
My mother can certainly be rough around the edges at times, but she also taught me to have compassion for people who have been wronged. She taught me to empathize with those who have made mistakes.
My parents, and especially my mother, encouraged by the director of the local school which I was attending, wanted in spite of everything to send me to a National School of Arts and Crafts so that I could later become an engineer.
This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.
My mother gave me singing lessons; that was totally painful, because I couldn't do what she wanted to hear. She used to say: there's more there, there's more voice but I just didn't want to give it to her.
The tendency is to think if you are a professional woman, it's because you've turned your back on the traditional side. The tendency is not to recognize that we can excel as professionals without giving up our identity of being mother, wife and homem...
When I was a young man, barely 18, I discovered Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, and for six months I told my mother she was damned to hell. That wasn't much fun. I abandoned it.
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women...
I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.
My mother saw a movie when she was 14 years old. I forget the name of the movie, but one of the lead characters was named Lark. She decided then she would name me and she stuck to it, and here I am.
