Richard Rodriguez’s half-memoir, half essay “Aria,” published in 1982 as part of the book Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, was met upon publication with wildly divided response. It was lauded for its heartfelt, intellectual vantage point on the issues of Mexican-American youth and bilingual education by many critics, while it simultaneously generated backlash from the Chicano/a community, who saw his opposition to bilingual education, and indictment of those “middle-class ethnics” who supported it, as traitorous. It is this latter response, and the opinions that incited it, that the piece is, today, most remembered for: in part due to the considerable growth of minority populations in relation to the nation as a whole, Rodriguez’s opposition to bilingual education as present in “Aria” is increasingly aligned with conservative political thought that at the time it might well not have been intended to share voice with. Considering all of this, it would seem (on the surface, at least) unlikely that the piece would share much in common with …y no se lo tragó la tierra/…And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, which was immediately embraced as an emblem for social action by the Chicano/a movement during el movimiento. While both written by Chicano authors, and both at least partially autobiographical – Rivera expressed his desire for …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him was to paint the “people he knew” from his time growing up as a migrant in Texas – the social and political lights they are remembered in association with are so vastly different that it would be easy, in fact, to see them on opposite ends of a spectrum, as opposed as the work of Langston Hughes and George Schuyler. But this view is belied, somewhat, by the stories Rodriguez tells of his childhood – stories of loss, due to the world that is America. “America isn’t a country of family values;” he says. “Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home.”
Though the “individuality through assimilation” that Rodriguez espouses would likely fall poorly on Tomás Rivera’s ears, his depictions of a child born and raised el otro lado to Mexican parents, still caught in the traditions of the home country, echo some of those endured by the nameless boy in Rivera’s novella. Where Young Richard Rodriguez was “unsettled” by hearing his father struggle with English (15), the nameless boy is frustrated by his parent’s continued ascription to a religion that does them no favors (“And the Earth Did Not Devour Him”); where Rodriguez’s sense of security at home is undermined by his parents agreement to “give up the language (the sounds) that had revealed and accentuated our family’s closeness” (21), the nameless boy’s sense of domestic security is stricken because his parents’ wishes for a better life for their child can’t surmount the reality of his otherness (“It’s That It Hurts”). Rather than far ends of a spectrum, the experiences here are two sides of a coin – that of the American child born to Mexican parents – but they are separated, and shaped, by the social environments they occur in. Rodriguez admits that there was very little bigotry directed towards his family where he grew up in Sacramento (12), and his family always felt as though both a financial and social future were open to them, and especially to their children, and as such providing the most advantageous path to achieving those was appropriate. This is in contrast to Rivera’s nameless boy, who, when faced with racism that excludes him wholly from equal interaction with his birth country, has nowhere to turn but to go “home to get his father” (103), sending him back to the isolation of his racially, culturally and linguistically segregated family.
Question: To what extent do we feel that Rodriguez’s viewpoint is dictated by his background?
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
No, of course not. I see.
"This happened, too. I swear I'm not making this up. It's all true. It was the last time I was going to be with your father. We had agreed. All for the best. Surely I could see that, couldn't I? My own good. A good sport. A young girl like me. Hadn't I understood... responsibilities. Besides, he could never marry me. You didn't think...? Never marry a Mexican. Never marry a Mexican... No, of course not. I see. I see."
Though brief, this passage, appearing midway through “Never Marry a Mexican,” is among the story’s most emotionally resonant. Coming directly after two sections that traded narrative audience, it capitalizes on the mild confusion bred by the transition. Throughout, the piece is written in a subjective narrative first-person: our protagonist is telling her story. Less consistent, though, is to whom, and the answer changes several times, here being particularly noteworthy. Whereas the opening portion feels as though (or at least doesn’t dissuade the reader from believing that) it is directed at the reader, this passage, as with a few others in the piece, is directed very specifically at someone within the story: the son of her ex-lover, whom, despite her claims, she still loves dearly, and whose decision to end their affair has left a permanent blemish she can’t escape. These shifts in audience are accompanied by shifts in tone: as the material becomes increasingly personal, and often enough increasingly dark with it, it also becomes increasingly conversational. This allows Cisneros a greater flexibility with the structure of the language – unlike the opening section, which reads as her telling a story, and as such relies on traditional sentence structure, the passage where she’s telling the son of the last time she saw his father is a conversation, an emotionally-charged one, at that, and reads as such. Few of the sentences are complete, and one of those is just the assurance “I swear I’m not making this up.” The most substantive, “It was the last time I was going to be with your father,” comes early in the paragraph, and is followed by a string of broken statements, headed by “We had agreed,” and degenerating into a string platitudes, “All for the best,” “My own good,” that makes the entirety reek of a pained disingenuousness. It is largely the structure – the fragments, the statements trailing off into ellipses -- that convey the narrator’s state, driven to distraction by the memory of it.
For a story dominated by the tragic romantic misadventures of its protagonist, very little is invested in characterization of the two primary romantic counterparts: Drew, the father, seems complex from an objective distance, but all his traits are being filtered through the anguish of our narrator, as it standard for a subjective narration; the son serves as little more than a confidante and prop for her sexual revenge. This flatness might seem peculiar, if the audience were at any point mislead to believe that her romances were the piece’s central theme. But no, of course not – there is a reason the story begins at the border, and the first portion is devoted to her family’s, and her own, identity crisis. In this passage, that confusion expressed as a child comes back with bruising pertinence, riding on the back of a motif, suddenly and surprisingly doing double-duty. When the piece opens, her reflection on her mother’s advice to “Never marry a Mexican,” and how she’d extended that to all men, but with particular focus on a laundry list of Central and South American nationalities, gave the impression of an independent young woman, yes, but as importantly one defining herself (and being defined as those around her) as from “el otro lado,” primarily American. Here, though, the very same mantra is being applied to her, giving reason (whether unspoken or not) for her romantic abandonment. And her understanding and acceptance of this – “No, of course not. I see. I see.” – is devastating.
Discussion question: is there a particular significance to the gummi bears? If so, what?
Though brief, this passage, appearing midway through “Never Marry a Mexican,” is among the story’s most emotionally resonant. Coming directly after two sections that traded narrative audience, it capitalizes on the mild confusion bred by the transition. Throughout, the piece is written in a subjective narrative first-person: our protagonist is telling her story. Less consistent, though, is to whom, and the answer changes several times, here being particularly noteworthy. Whereas the opening portion feels as though (or at least doesn’t dissuade the reader from believing that) it is directed at the reader, this passage, as with a few others in the piece, is directed very specifically at someone within the story: the son of her ex-lover, whom, despite her claims, she still loves dearly, and whose decision to end their affair has left a permanent blemish she can’t escape. These shifts in audience are accompanied by shifts in tone: as the material becomes increasingly personal, and often enough increasingly dark with it, it also becomes increasingly conversational. This allows Cisneros a greater flexibility with the structure of the language – unlike the opening section, which reads as her telling a story, and as such relies on traditional sentence structure, the passage where she’s telling the son of the last time she saw his father is a conversation, an emotionally-charged one, at that, and reads as such. Few of the sentences are complete, and one of those is just the assurance “I swear I’m not making this up.” The most substantive, “It was the last time I was going to be with your father,” comes early in the paragraph, and is followed by a string of broken statements, headed by “We had agreed,” and degenerating into a string platitudes, “All for the best,” “My own good,” that makes the entirety reek of a pained disingenuousness. It is largely the structure – the fragments, the statements trailing off into ellipses -- that convey the narrator’s state, driven to distraction by the memory of it.
For a story dominated by the tragic romantic misadventures of its protagonist, very little is invested in characterization of the two primary romantic counterparts: Drew, the father, seems complex from an objective distance, but all his traits are being filtered through the anguish of our narrator, as it standard for a subjective narration; the son serves as little more than a confidante and prop for her sexual revenge. This flatness might seem peculiar, if the audience were at any point mislead to believe that her romances were the piece’s central theme. But no, of course not – there is a reason the story begins at the border, and the first portion is devoted to her family’s, and her own, identity crisis. In this passage, that confusion expressed as a child comes back with bruising pertinence, riding on the back of a motif, suddenly and surprisingly doing double-duty. When the piece opens, her reflection on her mother’s advice to “Never marry a Mexican,” and how she’d extended that to all men, but with particular focus on a laundry list of Central and South American nationalities, gave the impression of an independent young woman, yes, but as importantly one defining herself (and being defined as those around her) as from “el otro lado,” primarily American. Here, though, the very same mantra is being applied to her, giving reason (whether unspoken or not) for her romantic abandonment. And her understanding and acceptance of this – “No, of course not. I see. I see.” – is devastating.
Discussion question: is there a particular significance to the gummi bears? If so, what?
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