RICHARD
Richard Rodriguez was born in Sacramento, California during the 1950’s. His mother and father had worked hard before he was born to secure their children’s futures in the richer part of America, rather than the border towns, like many Mexican immigrants. Richard’s primary language was Spanish, so when he walked into his first day of school at a Catholic academy, he only knew around fifty stray English words. When Richard talked, he often spoke English with a few Spanish words intertwined in the sentences. After his first three weeks at the academy, a brother from the academy came to the Rodríguezes’ home to ask them to use English more around their children in order to help them absorb the language more efficiently. Richard’s
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parents were more than happy to oblige to the brother’s request, since their biggest wish was for Richard to advance in the world. The family worked every night together on improving their English, and their daily practice helped Richard a lot, because by the time he was in his third year at the Catholic academy, he was fluent in both English and Spanish. After mastering two languages, he could make friends more easily with the other students at the academy. Richard was invited to houses that were much more lavish and elegant than his own, and always made sure to talk to his friends and their parents with the utmost of respect and manners. As a result of his good conduct, he was always invited back to their houses. During his childhood, Richard was found reading almost everywhere. His father would be surprised to find Richard reading in the garage when he went to his workbench to fix pipes. Richard eventually graduated from the academy with excellent grades, and lots of awards, medals, and certificates. Then, he moved onto a local high school. At the high school, while it was still a Catholic high school, there was no group of nuns and brothers like there were at the grammar school, and instead the teachers were not directly connected to a church. At the high school, Richard still achieved unbelievable grades and won lots of awards. Richard was so smart that he was acing the most difficult classes available at the school. It was no surprise that when Richard graduated from high school, he could choose nearly any college in the nation. Richard grew up at an astounding rate from being a "socially disadvantaged child" to becoming a fully assimilated American, transitioning from the Spanish-speaking world of his family to the wider, presumably freer, public world of English.
But the journey was not without costs: his American identity was only achieved after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture. "Americans like to talk about the importance of family values," says Rodriguez. "But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home." Rodriguez's strong stands against bilingual education and affirmative action have caused unrest amongst the Mexican American population. Some Mexican Americans called him pocho—traitor—accusing him of betraying himself and his people. Others called him a "coconut"—brown on the outside, white on the inside. He calls himself "a comic victim of two cultures," which is very true because in the Mexicans eyes he seems to be a fellow Mexican American but if you understand him he shows how much he is like a Caucasian man with his advanced …show more content…
vocabulary. RICHARD’S MOTHER Richard’s mother had to work very hard to make sure that her family would live a better life in America than in Mexico. She grew up in the same town that Richard’s father grew up but moved across the border with Richards’s father after they decided that they wanted to raise their children in America to live better lives. When they arrived in America Richards mother went to high school and got her diploma because of teachers who didn’t realize that she could barely speak English. She applied for a typing job at a printing shop and discovered that she could type very fast and that she is an excellent speller. She only had one problem with living in America because not everyone in town was Catholics. When she had grown up everyone in her town were Catholics and everyone stopped working on Catholic feast days. In Sacramento everyone was not a Catholic so on holidays like Halloween, all of the children dressed up in costumes while only Catholic children attended church the next day to celebrate the Catholic holiday. Richard’s mother lived a hard life of working so that her children did not have to face the poverty that she had to face when she was a child. RICHARD’S FATHER Richard’s father grew up in a small town with his family and where everyone was a Catholic.
He remembered days where no one in the town would work when it was a Catholic feast day; instead they celebrated and had parties. Catholicism was a large part of Richard’s father’s life but poverty did not allow him to attend a Catholic grammar school. Instead he was taught by his family how to work. He would pull weeds from the garden and fixed the pipes in the house’s rudimentary plumbing system. When Richard’s father moved to America, he moved because he wanted a better life for his children and for his children to get a better education than he got when he was a child. Richard’s father was limited to physical labor related jobs rather than a desk job that paid well so he had to suffer the fact that nowhere that he worked would have a labor union. Richard’s father never got to get any fancy diplomas or awards like his son ended up achieving, he got money from his parents and from neighbors for fixing their plumbing. When he moved to America Richard’s father finally realized how important it was to get a high school diploma and formal work experience. As a result his family depended upon his wife’s typing job to keep them in a house in the nice part of town. This made Richard’s father feel like he was unimportant and that his wife was running the house and making all of the family’s
money.
Gloria Anzaldua, wrote the essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” communicating and describing her adolescence in a society brimming with sexism, cultural imperialism, racism, low self-esteem, and identity formation. The reason one comes to America is to finer themselves academically, and intellectually. One must learn to speak English to live among the American’s, because that is the language they speak. Though, no one has the right to deprive you of your familiar tongue. At a young age, Anzaldua was scolded, even mistreated for speaking her native “Chicano” tongue. Anzaldúa described this ignorance, cruelty, and discrimination when she states: “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess – that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler.” She overcomes this hostility throughout her life.
Rodriguez views the same as a public and private language. He explains that the term “private” relates to Spanish language, while the term “public” is the kind of English language he speaks outside home. As he writes “… I wrongly imagined that English was intrinsically a public language and Spanish an intrinsically private one…” (513). In addition, Rodriguez’s reference to the English language as a gringo sound gives an impression of a child’s resentment towards said language. The term gringo in Spanish means los gringos which is a “derogatory term for English-speaking Americans” (512). When Rodriguez parents stopped communicating at home in Spanish, the laughter at home faded along with his private language. This further supports Rodriguez’s statement that “… as we learned more and more English, we shared fewer and fewer words with our parents” (515). Thus the end of a once full of laughter home, yet the beginning of Rodriguez’s mastery of the English language. Similar to Tan’s experience, the writer’s rebellious nature challenged her critics by proving that Asian’s skills are not limited to Math and Science. Thus, the decision behind to shift from pre-med to English major. As Tan writes, “I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me” (510). Hence Tan’s strong conviction to resist the convention of
In “Se Habla Español,” the author, Tanya, talks about her personal experience with dealing with language issues. Tanya was born in Guatemala and moved to the U.S when she was only three years old. Tanya’s mother did not want her to speak Spanish, because they believed that when they moved to the U.S speaking only English would help her blend in. For so long Tanya believed that speaking Spanish went hand in hand with being poor and speaking only English made her feel superior. After many years she has tried to learn Spanish but has found it quite difficult because although that is her native language it was like trying to learning a whole new language for her. In “Mother Tongue,” Amy’s explains how she has come to the realization that she speaks more than one “English,” meaning that the way she speaks in front of a crowd is different than the way she speaks with her mother. The way Amy speaks with her mother is still English although it is not proper. Amy expresses how she does not really like the phrase “broken English,” because if something is broken it needs to be fixed and she does not feel that her mother’s English needs to be
In the essay “Achievement of Desire”, author Richard Rodriguez, describes the story of our common experience such as growing up, leaving home, receiving an education, and joining the world. As a child, Rodriguez lived the life of an average teenager raised in the stereotypical student coming from a working class family. With the exception, Rodriguez was always top of his class, and he always spent time reading books or studying rather than spending time with his family or friends. This approach makes Rodriguez stand out as an exceptional student, but with time he becomes an outsider at home and in school. Rodriguez describes himself as a “scholarship boy” meaning that because of the scholarships and grants that he was receiving to attend school; there was much more of an expectation for him to acquire the best grades and the highest scores. Rodriguez suggests that the common college student struggles the way he did because when a student begins college, they forget “the life [they] enjoyed
Rodriguez characterizes Mexico as a country with a culture of tragedy and America as a country with a culture of comedy. However, America is comedic in the Greek sense-in the sense that America is not comedic at all. Rodriguez feels that Mexico, in being the place of tragedy, is better off. America, on the other hand, has to face the burden of optimism, and the subsequent let-downs. Thus, in a sense, he characterizes them in ways that oppose what he truly thinks of them.
George Lopez was born on April 23rd in the year of 1961 in the Mission, Hills of Los Angeles, California. His father who was Anataso was a migrant worker who left his wife, Frieda for a different lifestyle. After Lopez was born, Frieda and George Moved in with his mom’s parents who tried to raise Lopez In her hometown of California. When George was a young kid his mother explained to him that his father had died. Even though, the real truth was that he was in fact alive but wanted nothing to do with his son who he had with his ex-wife. His mother soon remarried when George was only ten years of age. His mouther also left, so he had nowhere to go other than to his grandparents’ house because he figured they would take care of him. Lopez was
A large number of people in the Hispanic community whether Hispanics are not able to get the English literacy skills that they need not because they want to keep born in Latin America or the United States, speak Spanish primarily. This is basically because in present day time, Hispanics are more likely to pass Spanish to their kids now than they have done in the past. (Ortiz, P.149) This is seen as a social problem, especially because of the fact that there is an increasing demand that English should only be taught in public school and it should also be spoken within the Spanish community. Even though Hispanics do speak a lot of Spanish most of the time, they still do learn English also, especially the young. But, because of the large flow of immigrants, the use of Spanish is used more often because they are constantly encountering immigrants who speak no English. (Ortiz, P. 150) Before hand there has been said to have been lower achievements when Hispanics make frequent use of the Spanish la...
Rodriguez highlights comfortable, soothing, and intimate sounds of his family language by saying, “Spanish seemed to me the language of home. It became the language of joyful return. A family member would say something to me and I would feel myself specially recognized. My parents would say something to me and I would feel embraced by the sounds of their words. Those sounds said: I am speaking with ease in Spanish. I am addressing you in words I never use with los gringos. I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one outside. You belong with us. In the family”. The private language is like an intimate secret code among the family. Despite the struggle with their family languages, the author understands that the private language being spoken has been a large part of their lives and has helped shaped their view of the
In the article, “Public and Private Language”, Richard Rodriguez argues that bilingual education delays learning a “public language” and developing a public identity”. I can relate to Richard’s story because my family and me moved to America when I was young and we also had the same struggle learning a new language. I agreed with Rodriguez when he expressed that he didn’t feel like a true American until he mastered the English language because English is the first and main language in America.
Mary went from not even attending school in Russia, to star pupil in America, illustrating the promise that America had to offer immigrants. American afforded Mary with opportunities that were impossible in her home country of Russia. Even though Frieda also lived in America, her circumstances represent the realities of the Old World. For instance, Frieda’s only way of learning about American history was through Mary, as she was not afforded time to read while working. By not attending school, Frieda did not only became stuck in the Old World mentality in terms of education but also in terms of marriage. Her father “had put Frieda to work out of necessity. The necessity was hardly lifted when she had an offer of marriage, but my father would not stand in the way of what he considered her welfare” (Antin, 218). Frieda was not given the opportunity to marry for love, as was the American way, but was married out of necessity for her welfare, reminiscent of the Old World mentality. Public education provided Mary with the opportunity to marry not because she had to in order to survive, but because she wanted to. The stark contrast between the lives of Frieda, representing life in the
Latinos who were raised in the United States of America have a dual identity. They were influenced by both their parents' ancestry and culture in addition to the American culture in which they live. Growing up in between two very different cultures creates a great problem, because they cannot identify completely with either culture and are also caught between the Spanish and English languages. Further more they struggle to connect with their roots. The duality in Latino identity and their search for their own personal identity is strongly represented in their writing. The following is a quote that expresses this idea in the words of Lucha Corpi, a Latina writer: "We Chicanos are like the abandoned children of divorced cultures. We are forever longing to be loved by an absent neglectful parent - Mexico - and also to be truly accepted by the other parent - the United States. We want bicultural harmony. We need it to survive. We struggle to achieve it. That struggle keeps us alive" ( Griwold ).
My parents decided to immigrate to the United States when I was six years of age. As we established ourselves in the United States, my first language was only Spanish. Spanish was the language that I was taught at home, and it was the only language to be spoken at home. Rodriguez describes when he first entered his classroom where he was introduced to a formal English-speaking context, writing that, ?I remember to start with that day in Sacramento-a California now nearly thirty years past-when I first entered a classroom, able to understa...
Growing up as a Mexican-American, I was exposed to a completely different range of foods, people, and customs. My household was largely filled with images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other numerous saints. These images as well as a number of different candles and incenses demonstrated my cultures’ strong belief in the Catholic faith. Even the food had a distinctive Mexican taste as the flavors combined with the spiciness of peppers produced an overall mouthwatering meal. Spanish was regularly spoken at home in everyday conversations with family and friends. It was not until I started kindergarten and – to a lesser extent, preschool – that I became fully fluent in the English language. However, I began to acquire English long before by watching educational television shows such as Caillou, Dragon Tales, and Clifford the Big Read Dog. I developed a routine pattern of religiously watching these educational shows where the main characters became like close friends constantly teaching me new things and show...
Cheech Marin’s film, Born in East L.A., spotlights many key issues brought upon mainly by immigration. This comedic production hits the hearts to many because while it may be humorous, it is also a reality to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and so it hits close to home to many. Immigration is the main topic of this motion picture, but I want to focus on one subdivision of it only; language. The linguistic barriers in between a border is evident in the movie and especially a reality in our world.
...ents go on addressing them in their natural language, but the children reply in English. What the children of immigrants end up with is not a compromise, not a blend. They end up pure and simple with the language and culture of their peers” (pg. 30).