Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez, "Aria"

Richard Rodriguez (1944- ) was born in San Francisco and earned a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph. D from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as an essayist, college lecturer, editor, and broadcast journalist. Rodriguez has written a controversial and influential trilogy of memoirs about American public life: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (1992), and Brown: An Erotic History of the Americas (2002). His views, especially those against affirmative action and bilingual education, have been the focus of much lively debate over the past two decades. He has published numerous articles and essays in periodicals such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. Rodriguez's many awards and honors include a Peabody Award in 1997 for his work on the PBS program NewsHour and the Frankel Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This essay was first published in 1981 in The American Scholar, and reprinted in a slightly different form in Hunger of Memory.

CONTENT

1. Explain the title's relationship to the rest of this piece. (If you would like to refresh your memory about the definition of the word aria, click here.)
2. What is the turning point that made Rodriguez decide to start learning "classroom English"?
3. Describe the feeling the "dark-faced old woman" on the bus evoked in Rodriguez.
4. What does the author mean by referring to Spanish as a "private language"?
5. According to the author, in what two ways is a person individualized?
6. What were the initial changes the author noticed taking place regarding his parents after the "Americanization" process began? Regarding his siblings? Regarding himself?
7. Explain the paradox that the author mentions about the process of achieving individuality in public.

STRATEGY AND STYLE

1. There are parenthetical remarks in nearly every paragraph in this essay. Go through the piece and review them. What work do they do regarding the author's notions of public and private speech? How would the essay be different without them?
2. In paragraph sixteen Rodriguez makes repeated references to his mother in the third person. What is the effect of this choice? How could he have written this passage differently? What would change?
3. Paragraph six is two words long. What is the impact of such a stylistic decision? What information do the two words impart? Find the second shortest paragraph in the essay. How are these two paragraphs related?
4. Find the places in the text where Rodriguez is an undetected onlooker. (At one point he calls himself a spy.) Describe the scenes. How does this role affect the author as a narrator?
5. What is the author's position on bilingual education? How does he build his argument? What specific evidence from the text can you use to support your answer?

1. Recall a time when someone made a judgment about you based upon the language you used. Describe the incident in as much detail as you can. How did you feel? How can you relate these feelings to this reading?
2. Write your personal history, covering approximately the same time at school that Rodriguez recounts here.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING

1. Should English be made the "official" language of the United States? If so, how would this be done and to what end? If not, why not? In either case, make sure your definition of the word official is clear and that your main points have adequate support.
2. Consider this sentence from paragraph ten: "Conversations became content-full." What does Rodriguez mean? If content is all, what drops out? Make notes following some of your daily conversations. What role does content play there? Do you agree with Rodriguez's observations? Explain using specifics from both "Aria" and your own observations.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

This essay was published in 1981. Study the history of bilingual education in one U.S. state from that date to the present. (See the selection of "Cultural links" below to help get you started.) Identify the prominent figures involved and explain their positions. What major changes, if any, have taken place over this period of time?

WEB CONNECTION

Take a look at these reviews of Rodriguez's book Hunger of Memory. Some of them are blurbs. What methods would you use to find the whole review in these cases? What information on this page would you feel comfortable using for a paper about "Aria," and what information would you avoid using? Why? What's a major difference between the two types of reviews found here?

LINKS

Biographical

For a bit of background information about Rodriguez, click over to his "Off Camera" biography at the Online NewsHour site. You'll also find a photo there, as well as links to some of his essays.

Here's a biography from the Pacific News Service with another photo and more links. Compare it to the one above. Why, do you think, the information presented differs in these two cases?

This interview with Rodriguez, which revolves around the metaphor of the Melting Pot, provides other glimpses of the author's life. It's from Insight and Outlook, and was conducted shortly after the publication of his book Days of Obligation.

Bibliographical

Read this review of Days of Obligation from World Literature Today. After reading the review, are you interested in reading the book? Why or why not?

For further reading, here is an essay Rodriguez wrote for PBS about speaking Spanish in United States. What thematic links can you make from this reading to "Aria"?

On a different topic, here's an essay by the author about the declining crime rate in 1996. How does the tone differ here from the reading in your text?

Cultural

To put bilingual education in the United States into a broader historical context, study this brief history of the subject, which traces the movement back to the middle of the 19^th Century.

Interested in doing more research about bilingual education, but not sure where to start looking? This directory at Google.com should give you plenty of ideas.

If you'd like some starting points to research governmental and academic aspects of bilingual education, this "Electronic Textbook" will help you on your way.

Looking for a way to narrow a research topic? The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition's website offers much detailed information about things like finding out about state resources and promoting cultural understanding in schools.