Summary Of The Achievement Of Desire By Richard Rodriguez

Hunger of Memory is a memoir of the educational experience of Richard Rodriguez and his journey as a first generation Mexican- American citizen. The book is compiled of a prologue, in which he states his reasons for writing, and six chapters with no specific chronological order. Richard Rodriguez grew up in a white, middle-class neighborhood and attended a Catholic school. He describes his early childhood as a war between his “public” and “private life”: a war between school and home. He struggled when he first started school, because English was his second language and he felt insecure about his shaky ability to communicate through it.

In Richard Rodriguez’s essay, “The Achievement of Desire” he brings you through important memories of his life that impacted his education, and more specifically his reading and writing. As a child, he was eager to learn and ready to soak up all the knowledge he could get. He received many awards and good feedback from his teachers which gave him all the more motivation to learn more. Soon his motivation came out of annoyance of his parents.

This presentation is based on language and identity. Rodriguez states that it was a struggle growing up in an English speaking environment because of his heritage. He didn’t feel like he fit in with the other kids at his school. He learned that going back and forth with switching languages had some positive and negative effect on him. Throughout his essay, he shows that after a while of practicing English he diverted from Spanish to English becoming his first language.

Rodriguez uses the public vs private analogy multiple times in his essay. Spanish being the private language meaning that fewer people speak and know it, and that because it is private, people who speak it are at a disadvantage. He says, “What I needed to learn in school was that I had the right- and the obligation- to speak the public language of los gringos. ”(6-8) In the first grade, Rodruguez had to alter his personal life and individuality because English had to no

Richard Rodriguez wrote, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, in his essay he wrote about the problem he faced growing up as a bilingual Hispanic in America. Growing up as a Hispanic in United States was a struggle for Richard Rodriguez. This was because he was a Spanish speaking child and living in an English-speaking society. Rodriguez went to Roman Catholic school where many of his classmates were the children of business man, lawyers and doctors. Adjusting to the American culture helped Rodriguez feel more comfort among the other American students.

Reading an essay must have two sets of eyes, one from a reader and another from a writer. I as a reader, found Rodriguez’s essay rude and relatable; his way for describing what happened to him shared a type of equality with me in a different perspective. On the other hand, reading his writing as a writer I can fully appreciate his way to weave ideas and enjoy vivid descriptions about his life. Rodriguez’s Essay embodies different writing techniques, such as voice and tone. His voice is direct and focus, he describes his life as plain as possible and describes each event so that the reader can follow him through his life.

The first space he mentions is the space he holds at home with his family’s heritage as a disadvantage boy, and the second space is his end point as a scholarly middle-class man. Rodriguez states, “What he grasps very well is that the scholarship boy must move between environments, his home and the classroom which are at cultural extremes, opposed”(pg. 48) When describing his two separate spaces, Rodriguez emphasizes the two language worlds involved throughout his life. Rodriguez describes the process of moving from one language space to the next as a scholarship boy; as a disadvantage boy he mentions how he spook mostly Spanish and as he became a middle class man he seemed to lose more and more of his Chicano heritage. During the process of becoming a middle class man Rodriguez mentions how he experiences shame, guilt, and loneliness, he becomes very obsessive over his education and at times misses being with his family. He mentions “The scholarship boy needs to spend more and more time studying; each night enclosing himself in the silence permitted and required by intense concentration.

Rebuttal to Hunger of Memory Richard Rodriguez came from a Hispanic family that had little to no knowledge of the English language. That required his entire family to speak English at home and for him and his siblings to endeavor daily tutoring sessions. He stated in his memoir that learning the public language of English would drain the intimacy out of his first language: “Once I learned the public language it would never again be easy for me to hear intimate family voices (240).” This outlook has shaped his entire life.

As children they will always want to be part with family, and they are accepting that their parents have the right to make choices for them to achieve their gold. In a chapter from “Aria: Memoir of Bilingual childhood,” by Richard Rodriguez, who is an internationally known scholar, the author discusses his worlds that he has to face as a student who is raise up in a Mexican immigrant family and going to America school. Rodriguez explains his life experiences being education person and ones he had at home and culture. The more successful Rodriguez became as a student, the less connected he was to his cultural heritage and family. Over all, in Rodrigues life story was connected with some of my life experience, struggle with the language and adopt

In the essay Rodriguez challenges the idea of bilingual education, he takes us through his personal experience of a bilingual childhood where he talks about what he encountered in America as he attempts to adjust to the American culture, and how he preserved his intimacy with his family even through the language barrier. Throughout the essay, we soon see that his identity and success is tied to the place and how he was raised, his parents are a major part of his success. Richard Rodriguez was Born in a Mexican immigrant family, him and he’s family moved to California, so he had to adapt to the new and unfamiliar situation, where the culture and language is completely different, therefore making him feel like he did not belong in the American culture. There was something Richard said that was really interesting, he said “An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white.”

Richard Rodriguez wrote “Scholarship Boy” to explain the range of conflicting emotions he felt over receiving an education while growing up at home with his immigrant parents. He enjoyed school and learned quickly, but soon he knew more than his parents could comprehend. He was ashamed of his parents for not knowing as much as he did and this drove him away from them and more towards his instructors and his books. Though his parents were proud of him, he struggled to feel anything but embarrassed of them and this affected how he viewed himself and the education he was blessed to have. When Gerald Gaff was young, he did not feel that books related to his life and that they, therefore, were not worth reading.

Introducing a child to a whole new language and way of lifestyle, it abruptly impacts the child without any previous notice, is like throwing a newborn in a pool and expecting it to swim back to its mother, unreasonable and irrational. In Richard Rodriguez’s “Aria”, published in 1980, which previously appeared in the memoir Hunger to Memory, presents the genuine struggles that come in hand with adjusting to a new language and culture. It emphasizes not only the social aspects of a language barrier, but the emotional and physical facets of it as well. All these previously mentioned, are a great issue that affect many people no matter age or race, it is something that many have felt and gone through, at a point in their life, thus the importance

Rodriguez and Hoggart’s opinions of a “scholarship boy” are very in many ways yet contain underlying differences due to the fact that they both have their own unique opinion. Rodriguez generalizes by speaking in third person about the “scholarship boy” you can see the relationship between his overall ideas and his personal experience. He introduces Hoggart by providing a quote that states, “Perhaps as early as the night he brings home an assignment from school and finds the house too noisy for study” (548). A large quote is introduced and it almost seems as if there is no outside point of view being taken in. Rather, just an indented version of Rodriguez’s thoughts on the matter.

Achieving an accurate education system is not an easy function for any nation. The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley, is a wonderful book that focusing on the important of the education and how can the changing on the education system and schools reforms change the whole country for the best. This book had a positive impact on me, it gives me hope that each country in the world can create stronger and more creative education system; a system that can achieve students and serves both equity and rigor. Importantly, that can happen if we think first what are our educational problems and how can we resolve them in a smart and wise way that can help us to have magnificent results that benefits everyone, the

Teachers "You must go beyond and seek to understand the cultural context of each student" (Braley et al., 2016, pp. 259). Success looks different for each student and teachers should realize culture may be reflected in students' actions. Additionally, teachers may be teaching students at various comprehension levels and students with learning disabilities. In these instances, it is essential to learn about where difficulties lie for children and enhancing their learning by meeting them where they are with content they can