Hunger Of Memory Summary

Freedom of speech — A right that comes with American citizenship; stripped away when freedom is not spoken in English. What could simply be an aspect of culture is now the verbal No-Man’s-Land. Two authors -- Martín Espada and Richard Rodriguez -- share their experiences in the war of English and Spanish. Their works, The New Bathroom Policy at English High School (Espada), and, Hunger of Memory (Rodriguez), recount their struggles with two tongues. Espada drafted a notion that elaborates on the paranoia and hostility of misunderstanding, whereas Rodriguez plants the seed of public and private identities. With their ideas considered, bilingualism should be a tool of communication and expression that can be used to educate in new ways.
A strong theme in Espada’s essay is the injustice towards Latinos, brought by people in
He articulates this in a few different scenarios. One that is of good mention discusses how his school teachers were apathetic and “Unsentimental about their responsibility. What they understood was that [he] needed to speak a public language” (27-29, Hunger of Memory). He touches on this to elucidate a theory about tongues -- stating that the apathy of his teachers was a push factor to learn the ‘public’ language of English. For as long as he waited to do so, his attempts in communicating with others outside of Spanish were futile. Similar to this point, Rodriguez interprets another notion that relates more to identity. He makes a statement about the validity of his American citizenship in the wake of learning English: “I came to believe what had technically been true since my birth: I was an American citizen” (120-122). In this instance, Rodriguez is putting on display what he could not feel without English. As a result of his previous inability to speak English, he felt that his American citizenship was