Hunger Of Memory Analysis

Rodriguez begins to become more involved in his classroom by his new grip on the English language. He shares fewer and fewer words with his mother and father. His tone now transforms into guilt. As Rodriguez's public language becomes more fluent, he forgets how to speak Spanish. "I would have been happier about my public success had I not recalled, sometimes, what it had been like earlier, when my family conveyed its intimacy through a set of conveniently private sound.? He begins to break out of the cocoon as a slow or disadvantaged child and blooms into a regular kid in his white society that only uses English. He feels a great sense of betrayal of his Mexican past. His connection that held him so close to his family is destabilized.

The particular focus of Rodriguez’s story is that in order to feel like he belonged to the “public society” he had to restrict his individuality. Throughout his story, Rodriguez discussed such topics as assimilation and heritage. He goes into depth about the pros and the cons of being forced to assimilate to the American culture. Growing up Hispanic in America was a struggle for Rodriguez. This was due to the fact that he was a Spanish-speaking boy living in an English-speaking society, and he felt like he was different than the other children. Rodriguez writes, “I was fated to be the ‘problem student’ in class” (Rodriguez 62). This is referring to Rodriguez’s improper knowledge of English. It made him stand out as the kid that was behind. He wanted to find the balance between the public and private face. He believed both were important to develop. As I read this story it changed the way I looked at people who speak different languages, and how it must be hard to fit in with society if you are not all fluent in English.

Our two authors, Richard Rodriguez and Sherman Alexie, are very well respected for their respective works on minority education. Richard Rodriguez is the author of the novel The Hunger of Memory, his personal autobiography. In this deeply personal and emotional work, Rodriguez explains how his education brought him success, but created a large rift between his Mexican heritage and culture and himself. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is Native American author who wrote the essay “Superman and Me.” In the essay, Alexie explains how his love of books began his education, the hardships that followed being an intelligent Indian, and how his education has brought meaning to his life. To both of these authors, the most important subject in these literary works is their education as minorities, and the success resulting from this education. In The Hunger of Memory, Rodriguez focuses on themes of how education can be beneficial, but at the same time cause separation from one’s original identity. “Superman and Me” visits themes of caring for others and how success is achievable by anyone. Each author sheds a different light on the education of minorities, but they share similar thoughts in theory. Education can bring an individual great success, but with this enlightenment comes the responsibility of understanding what the world truly contains.

Rodriguez begins to actively distance himself from his family and heritage. On nights when the house is filled with Spanish speaking relatives, he leaves the house as a way of breaking the connection. He begins to imitate his teachers? accents and use their diction. As time goes on, he desires more solitude. Again, this is all normal according to Hoggart. ?He has to be more and more alone, if he is going to get on?the boy has to cut himself off,? (47). This is exactly what Rodriguez does; he chooses his education and the classroom over his

Richard became resentful to his parents when they could not help him with school work which only pushed him to read more and more and pushed his family’s bond even farther away. He slowly became embarrassed at his family’s lack of education. He was ashamed when they had a difficult time to speak English in public. Throughout all this a small part of him was still grateful of their support towards him and the way they wanted him to succeed. His parents sent him to a school totally out of their economic abilities because they wanted to provide him with the best education possible. After he graduated from high school he was accepted into various colleges like Stanford and later went to Columbia and Berkeley for graduate school. Throughout his life he always struggled with the way he was labeled as a minority. A life changing event for Rodriguez was in 1967 when African American civil right leaders worked together to bring attention to the poor education African American students were receiving, and how due to this they weren’t adequately prepared for college. This brought a light to Hispanic- American activists they complain as well that there were not enough Hispanic students attending college and concluded that it was because of racism and the way society had them labeled as a minority group. Soon after this he was offered various offers for academic

After successfully winning several academic competitions, Rodriguez began to believe that he was too good for his family; he corrected them, avoided them, and unaccredited them, ‘I was not proud of my mother and father. I was embarrassed by their lack of education.’ His attitude remained throughout his teenage years, peeking when Rodriguez received acceptance and scholarships to attend Stanford College. It was at this time that his parents finally expressed their frustrations as well, suggesting that local colleges aren’t good enough for Rodriguez. He notes that, ‘Rodriguez’s] departure would only make physically apparent the separation that had occurred long before,’ which suggests that although the separation was apparent to him earlier, he chose not to do anything about it.

In “The Joy of Reading and Writing : Superman and Me” published in the Los Angeles Times, Sherman Alexie brings attention to the cultural divide between Indians and non - Indians, specifically in the area of education. Alexie uses himself as the example in the article, a “Spokane Indian boy” who lives on the reservation. Alexie chose to mimic his father's love for books, because of that he taught himself to read at a very young age. He learned to read by looking at the pictures in a Superman comic book. After teaching himself he “advances quickly”, unlike other kids he is able to read “Grapes of Wrath in kindergarten”. If he hadn’t been an Indian boy he may have been called a “prodigy” but he was so instead he was an “oddity”. At this point in the article Alexie brings us out of his past as a child and into his present as an educated Indian man. Much to his surprise he has become a writer. He says, “I visit schools and teach creative writing to Indian kids”. Alexie talks about how Indian children have lower

In the Hunger of Memories Rodriguez worked very hard to to become a student and acheive what he did in college. He felt as if he overcame the obstacle that minorities face such as getting a good education he would be different. One thing when he became a student, he was considered a “minority student”. He felt as though he shouldnt be considered minority because he was a student but now he is just categorized as the minoirity student. It is such a struggle because you are trying to hold on to who you truly are, but in order to be normalized you have to get rid of things that make up who you are. Things such as your language which is looked down upon if you do not try to assimlate and speak English.

Culture can be defined as manifestations of intellectual achievement which is not a facet of bias. How one sees the world actually comes from aspects such as emotional experiences and life events. One change could cause a butterfly effect that will forever change said person’s opinions. Culture is an aspect of art and customs throughout a community that remains in a sector of life whether the person intends it to be that way or not. It is human nature to desire different experiences outside of their cultural circle. One’s culture does not influence how they view the world due to autonomy, automatic assimilation, and operating behind the veil of ignorance.

People are invariably more proactive toward something they desire for because of the raising motivation. In some communities of Indians, children are expected to be stupid, whose failure are accepted by other Indians and sympathized by non-Indians. According to the article Superman and Me, the author Sherman Alexie said “I loved those books, but I also knew that love had only one purpose. I was trying to save my life.” Sherman doesn’t satisfy with his community which is being sympathized and discriminated; therefore, he is ambitious to change his life and even his community throughout knowledge. Sherman performs differently than other kids in his community, who are willing to accept those discriminations and hide their intelligence. Sherman’s opposite attitude toward his life is due to the own voice from his heart, which motivates him to insist on his ambitions. According to a book named The Myth of Latin Woman, the author had a remarkable experience that she was mistakenly recognized as a waitress in a coffee shop due to her skin color. The woman who is similar to the author at that time are always regarded as a low-educated and low-paid group in the society. The embarrassed scene of the mistaking motivates the author to change her current statues through education. The author’s mind is to demonstrate that the women similar to her should not be considered only as “waitresses”, while her experience in the coffee shop precisely gives her more motivation to prove her

What is memorable? A memory has a major component to marketing, it is a kind of product that gives someone a feeling that they are back in the beginning. Which is the feeling of nostalgia, what can be defined as a yearning to relive the past that can produce lingering emotions.

A true representation of every aspect of a teenage life that captures your emotions and releases them all at the same time at the end of the story. I need to try and convey to you what it was that created a connection between this book I made because it is something I’ve never been through before. It's agonizing, it's charming and it's utterly thrilling.

Most of the people living today have read some sort of passage or information that talked about the nazis. In many cases everyone hears jews telling their story of living through the Nazis but not everyone hears about Japanese people living through it much. So now let's compare two real novels of a Japanese family called “Uproots of a Japanese-American Family” and a Jewish family called “Keep Memory Alive” that lived through the Nazi.

, everything was completely different, things seemed weird. He was afraid of hearing people speaking a dissimilar language. All his family didn’t speak English at the time, it was very difficult for Richard’s family and for those people whom they were trying to speak with. he didn’t speak it well enough to make clear sounds because every time he was trying to say something in English, people would low their heads, so they could hear him well or had him repeat himself. Moreover, all he wanted was to keep the sound of Spanish., it made him feel like a happy kid. As the author of this autobiography “Hunger of Memory” Richard Rodriguez mentioned, Bilingual people wished to stick with their native language

In The Class the character Wei is portrayed as an immigrant who rarely participates or gets involved with his classmates due to the language barrier. In the autobiography Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez himself had difficulties participating in class, and interacting with his fellow classmates due to the language barrier. In both The Class and Hunger of Memory Wei and Rodriguez share the common bond of feeling like an alien in the classroom due to knowing more of their “private language” that they speak regularly speak at home to speaking a language foreign to them, that they have to practice everyday on their own to get familiar with the language and perfect their pronunciations.