An Analysis of Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood by Richard Rodriguez

When Rodriguez’s brings up his bilingual childhood, at the time when he had difficulties with English, he tells about how he only spoke Spanish while at home using it as “my private language, my family’s language,” informing the reader that while at home he was able to speak Spanish with an ease feeling that he belonged (Rodriguez 573). However, whenever outside of his house he sensed that “the sounds of the gringo, reminded me that in this so-big world I was a foreigner,” still new to the language, he felt that he did not belong (Rodriguez 593-594). Only after his parents began speaking to him in English and asking him “speak to us en ingles” Rodriguez felt encouraged to learn classroom English, which led to him taking a leap and answering a question in class giving him “the calming assurance, that I belong in public,” feeling part of the classroom when he was understood by the others (Rodriguez 577). He also had thoughts like “I finally came to accept what had been technically true since my birth:

He describes to the readers how he kept his private and public identities separate--his home being the private area where he spoke Spanish with his family and “the outside world” such as school where he was forced to speak English. Rodriguez shows a lost connection between his family because of learning a new language when he says, “The old Spanish words I had earlier used-mama and papa- I couldn’t use anymore.. On the other hand, the words I heard neighborhood kids call their parents seemed equally unsatisfactory… As a result, I never used them. Whenever I’d speak to my parents, I would get their attention by looking at them.” This shows that after English became Rodriguez’s main language, he’s become unsure of how he should address his parents or how he should start a conversation with them. He loses the connection and the intimacy that was once there has vanished. However, keeping your culture and language alive is important because it is very beneficial. When you keep your language it makes it easier for children to bond and connect with relatives who may not know English and also making it possible for the language to continue being passed down from generation to generation. Even though, it’s almost necessary to learn English when coming to the United States, it’s important to note that you should never

There is one thing that Rodriguez wanted and that was to be like his teachers. He was ashamed of his parents because they were not like his teachers. Rodriguez assumed they were never going to understand, he thought of them as uneducated (Rodriguez 600). Amy Tan talks very differently about her mom. She says “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation, and imagery” (Tan 2). The way she talks about her mom is very different from how Rodriguez describes his parents. Christine Leong says, “...language is the tool used to define us…”(Tan 2) and she's

The younger son, Richard Rodriguez, wrote his story of growing up and being educated in his family. He explains, very early in his life education change him and brought upon him. School focus his to speak only English, his parents encouraged him becoming an educated person and they pushed him to work hard at school. At the same time his parents didn’t want him to forgot his language and culture. After that he challenge himself, speak more English than Spanish until English become his primary language. The more he successes the less he connects with his family, this is a big effect his family life, his parents would feel so painful about his life had changed. In his reading see like he doesn’t happy with his successes.

furthermore, making him an expert of the situation that he is portraying to the audience because he lived it. Notably, Rodriguez accepts the struggle and shows growth through adversity in his experience. The audience can look at this as inspirational because they can tell he is honest and reasonable about the actions that took place for him to be able to improve his reading.

Rodriguez argues that knowing English is an asset and his reluctance to learn lengthens his set of problems. He starts the narrative with illustrating his confinement and predisposition to failure in grade school. Rodriguez is forced learn English because of painful alienation in his home and school. In the beginning, Richard has a distaste for English while paradoxically if he would have accepted learning it sooner it would have been less painful. The underlying exalted virtue is flexibility to learn regardless of the discomfort. His persuasiveness is effective as he creates sympathy in the audience by depicting highly relatable emotions such as loneliness, unwillingness, and confusion.

As Rodriguez grows into an intellectual student, there is an apparent shift of authority in his life. He found himself to be ashamed his parents and instead yearned to be like his educated teachers. He notes, “I was not proud of my mother and father. I was embarrassed by their lack of education” (Rodriguez 538). In his early school years, Rodriguez often compared himself to his other classmates. American children have educated parents who can help with homework, Rodriguez does not have this relationship with his parents. For example, when trying to

As a child, Rodriguez’s main focuses were reading and studying instead of having fun like the “normal” children. He later becomes rebellious against his parents who do not seem to understand anything he is doing at school and looks to his brother and sister who would bring home school trophies that made him want to have

In The Hunger of Memory, written by Richard Rodriguez, he addressed education by describing his life after he became educated. One of the issues that arise in the piece is his identity. Before Rodriguez became a known speaker, he thought of himself as an unintentional “classmate to children of rich parents” (Rodriguez). From a young age Rodriguez considered himself to be different, especially because he was a mexican growing up in “extreme public alienation” (Rodriguez). Richard Rodriguez questioned his identity. Not because he embarked on a journey from being a “‘socially disadvantaged’ child” to becoming a fully assimilated American, but because that assimilation of the American identity was achieved only after a painful separation from his past, family, and culture. Rodriguez wrote in his piece, “Consider me… a comic victim of two cultures” (Rodriguez). One reason Rodriguez’ identity was questioned, in a “cultural sense,” (Rodriguez) was because he “wasn’t able to use his spanish in school” (Rodriguez). This not only had an impact on his journey of assimilation, but also on his relationship with his parents.

In Richard Rodriguez we see several tensions throughout his experiences and how they affected his upbringing on how he became the man he is today. At his own home he is separating himself from his family while also feeling a form of anger towards them. Nevertheless he thrives in his studies in the classroom. Despite his educational success he also is away from his peers. Since he is so dedicated on his studies he lacks time to interact with them because his free time is spent reading.

By basically being thrown into a foreign world of words, Rodriguez tells of the initial difficulties he faced to learn a new language. Born in 1944, he was in school before any bilingual education policies were being enforced in the

At the begging of his essay part two Rodriguez specify that reading was not an important thing on his family but for him it was. When I first moved to Puerto Rico I remember trying to learn in Spanish by reading things such as, agendas, my grandmother, diary, and even products manual or instructions I knew I wouldn't understand but somehow I thought I would get something out of it, Meanwhile people in my surroundings would constantly tell me that talking and hearing i would learned Spanish faster and not reading it. Rodriguez mentioned how his teachers would say to the rest of the class, "I only wish the rest of you took reading as seriously as Richard obviously does". To clarify this made it even more obvious that he based most of his life

Whether Miguel’s family speaks English or not, it is important for them, as well as Miguel, to maintain their own language. Learning basic Spanish phrases, such as ‘hello,’ ‘Thank you’ will show Miguel and his family that you are interested in them and their language. People cannot be separated from their cultural backgrounds and need to keep them. The use of certain words and contextual inferences are different between these two cultures. Even though one person knows some of the vocabulary from another language, selecting the appropriate words, with the proper intonation critical even before the topic at hand can be

He was never too embarrassed about how his parents did not speak English fluently because they went about with their life very well and coped with their issues on their own. However, he could not hide the fact that he got nervous when he was at presence with his father. “Hearing them, I’d grow nervous, my clutching trust in their protection and power weakened” (Rodriguez, 537). “The very first chance that I got, I evaded his grasp and ran on ahead into the dark, skipping with feigned boyish exuberance” (Rodriguez 537).

In Aria,” from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Richard Rodriguez shares his autobiography of when he first entered his classroom at catholic school. He writes of his transition through emotions of fear, insecurity, and self-doubt now as he transitions from the privacy of his home to the public world. Richard develops an understanding that his that private language that is used in his home is different from the language that is publicly acceptable in school. His school teachers pushed his americanalization which led him to discover his identity, since he indeed was an American but grew up in a Spanish speaking home. Through his journey of journey of assimilation he discovers that learning this new language brought him a