Their Identity obviously
Their Identity obviously
embrace their heritage. For Richard Rodriguez, he grew up with Spanish strictly spoken in his…
In Aria; A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, Richard Rodriguez reflects of his childhood and raises his opinion of bilingual education. In his essay the address that it is not possible to use native language as well as English in public and school. Rodriguez originally from Mexico was a native Spanish speaker, Rodriguez describes that before school age the only time he would hear "broken English" was when he and his parents went out into public, therefore feeling as though his native language was a "private…
Richard Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944, in San Francisco, California, to Mexican immigrants Leopoldo and Victoria Moran Rodriguez, the third of their four children. When Rodriguez was still a young child, the family moved to Sacramento, California, to a small house in a comfortable white neighborhood. "Optimism and ambition led them to a house (our home) many blocks from the Mexican side of town.… It never occurred to my parents that they couldn't live wherever they chose," writes Rodriguez in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, his well-received 1981 autobiography. This first book placed him in the national spotlight but brought scorn from many supporters of affirmative action and bilingual education.…
In the story “How To Tame A Wild Tongue”, Gloria Anzaldua is a young Chicano girl who felt as though the language she spoke was needed to identify…
3. Much of Rodriguez’s essay is spent comparing the Spanish his parents spoke at home to the English they spoke outside it, “the language of their Mexican past” to “the English of public society” (par. 9). What is the point of including this material? How do these comparisons support his argument?…
1. Her essay, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" focuses on the idea of losing an accent or native language to conform to the current environment. Anzaldua grew up in the United States but spoke mostly Spanish. The problem is that the language she spoke was Chicano Spanish, not true Spanish. She was living in an English speaking environment she wasn't living in a Spanish speaking country, but was speaking a form of Spanish. She describes the difficulty of hard the delicate ever changing language of Chicano Spanish.…
Through social commentary, Anzaldua expresses the feelings and flaws that Latin@s see in themselves as a way to illustrate how they have been treated by Latin@s. Across history, groups of humans in power have put other groups of humans down as a way to maintain their power. This constant condemnation of a group of people leaves said group of people with the feeling that the oppressors have reason for the oppression. Anzaldua and her commentary is an example of this history when she writes, “As a person, I, as a people, we, Chicanos, blame ourselves/ hate ourselves, terrorize ourselves” (Anzaldua 67). There is a phenomenon known as the looking glass self. This looking glass self is the idea that over time you will begin to see yourself as other…
Both articles reflect how the language an individual speak is linked with their identity. Anzaldúa and Tan’s article both displayed a strong aid for their claim that many languages one’s speaks has a major impact on the way they interact with the society. They both demonstrate the essence of language, using their own experiences. They both talked about how they grew up surrounded with limited…
I believe that Rodriguez “private language” is Spanish to him. Rodriguez growing up in Sacramento led him to be an outsider because of the language English. However, at home his whole family spoke Spanish so Rodriguez being at home was being on a private getaway. As for my family, we all do speak English but we add a twist to the way we talk with nicknames and sayings that no one would understand but my family because it’s our “private language”.…
Gloria Anzaldua, who was an activist and writer that grew up in Texas and endured several forms of oppression, covers several topics in her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” including her feelings on the social and cultural difficulties that Mexican immigrants face when being raised in the United States. Among one of the things Anzaldua describes Mexican immigrants must endure is the judgment from other Mexicans for the way they speak Spanish. Anzaldua describes the situation as:…
Rodriguez’s parents had very little schooling. He recalls that in third grade he was “annoyed when he was unable to get help”, on a simple mathematics assignment (546).In Hoggart’s recall on the other hand, the student was much more independent and rarely turned to his parents for aid. It is obvious that in the light of family support Rodriguez was “better of”. His mother was: “a new girl to America [she] had been awarded a high school diploma by teachers to busy or careless to notice that she hardly spoke English” (552). Rodriguez became very conscious and somewhat ashamed of his parents language barrier. Even…
Her mother would tell her that she needed to master english, while her teacher would tell her that she would never belong in a class that spoke English. As her mother would say “I want you to speak English. Pa’hallar buen trabajo tienes que saber hablar el ingles bien. Que vale toda tu educación si todavía hablas el ingles con un “accent”, my mother would say, mortified that I spoke English like a Mexican “(Anzaldua 31) Anzaldua struggled to find her roots, to find a side that she identified with the most. Anzaldua explains this struggle in the following quote “We are constantly exposed to the Spanish of the Mexicans, on the other side we hear the Anglos’ incessant clamoring so that we forget our language...Neither eagle nor serpent but both. And like the ocean, neither animal respects the borders.” ( Anzaldua 33) Anzaldua was able to accept both sides of her culture without no longer feeling ashamed of her roots, she learned that she would never fit in perfectly, she would have to accept both sides of her culture and embrace…
In this essay Barrientos argues that the language she speaks defines her identity and who she is as a person. As Barrientos was growing up, she realized being Latin-American was not what she wanted to be, she decided to didn’t want to speak Spanish, as Barrientos says, “To me, speaking Spanish translated into being poor.” She also said “It meant waiting tables and cleaning hotel rooms. It meant being poor.” She thought if she stayed away from Spanish stereotypes they would…
However, while Anzaldua refers to herself as Chicano (Mexican American), describing in great detail the challenges of learning yet another acceptable way to communicate, (“for people who live in a country in which English is the reining tongue but who are not Anglo,”)(56) the Rodriguez’ family were immigrants. Rodriguez does not specify when the family moved to the United States, although he does mention that as a first grade student his initial difficulties in learning English were shared by his two older siblings as well. His recollection of a visit to his parents by three nuns from their school, “Do your children speak only Spanish at home, Mrs. Rodriguez?” “That Richard especially seems so timid and shy,” (10-11) would indicate that the move was fairly recent. Both author’s parents used some form of Spanish to communicate in the home but were anxious that their children learn English. While Rodriguez’ parents were especially concerned with wanting their children to fit in with their American peers at school, Anzaldua’s mother voiced a particular concern that her daughter’s accented English could hinder her ability to obtain good employment and her education would be…
I grew up in the bilingual programs available in El Paso during the 1980’s. While Spanish was my first language, we came to live in the US when I was three. I was able to experience bilingual education and all it’s drawbacks since kindergarten. It was a very different experience for me to be able to learn subject matter in both languages, while Spanish to this day is still the sole language in my parents home.…