•Author: Richard Rodriguez
•Title: Aria
•Argument: Rodriguez argues that we need to teach bilingual children to appreciate both their languages, but to make sure to teach them the culture of power, too. He agrees with Delpit that to succeed you need to be able to talk that culture of power. He also shows, however, how family is important and needs to remain encouraged as well.
•Quote #1- pg 36 “We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed- No longer so close, no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness.” This goes to show the pain of not participating in the dominate, English-speaking culture, but how it served to unite them together. True, he learned English, but in doing so had less and less in common with his parents as he was never taught to appreciate his own culture, and slowly lost it more and more the less he communicated with his parents.
•Quote #2- pg 37 “Though his English somewhat improved, he retired into silence.” The parents were told to help the children learn English by speaking it at home, and they did but in doing so, were finally surpassed by their children who didn’t want to talk with them anymore. The father, who was no longer able to pass his culture onto his kids (who were only interested in the dominant culture so they could fit in) had nothing left to do but become quiet and crawl inside himself, pulling away from interacting with his family.
•Quote #3- pg 39 “…while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality.” This is exactly what Delpit is saying- that understanding the dominant culture is so important to success. Individuality may be good, but if you are never taught how to get along in the mainstream, your future, mainlining a career, may be very hard to come by.
•My feeling: I do not totally agree with what he seems to be saying. I do agree that everyone should be taught how to get along in the mainstream society, that makes perfect sense: equity. But I am a big supporter on not forgetting who you are and where you come from. The last quote especially shows this, how the development of public individuality is the ultimate goal, but I don’t see why your public and private self have to be so different. Be who you need to be to do what you need to do, but be who you ARE as well and don’t forget where you’re coming from. At the end of the day you still have to live with yourself.
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You really capture the dilemma of Rodriguez here -- he paints a very painful picture of the sacrifices of assimilation and yet advocates for it anyway! Well articulated!! Nice connections to Delpit, too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that one should never forget where one comes from. But about the language, I think it depends on the person (immigrant). For instance, I want so badly to have the fluency you all have when speaking English and I know that to accomplish that I have to stop talking Spanish and try to speak English more often. Sometimes I think that trying to speak only English would be better for me but at the same time I think I don’t want to give up my native language. So it’s a big dilemma. I can relate with Rodriguez and I can tell how uncomfortable this situation can get.
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