"Aria" by Richard Rodriguez

“Without question, it would have pleased me to hear my teachers address me in Spanish when I entered the classroom. I would have felt much less afraid. I would have trusted and responded with ease. But I would have delayed—for how long postponed? – having to learn the language of the public society…learning the great lesson of of school, that I had a public identity. Fortunately, my teachers were unsentimental about their responsibility. What they understood was that I needed to speak a public language.” (Page 34)

     This specific quote from Rodriguez's reading spoke very strongly to me. While many people in today's society most commonly speak English, those students whom English is a second language to go unnoticed concerning their language development. Some teachers take for granted, such as the teachers Rodriguez had when he was a child, that some of their students come from entirely different backgrounds than their own and thus, dismiss the possibility that a few of their students are having difficulty developing academically. In her own reading, Lisa Delpit makes the point that we should be supporting the languages children bring to the public community from their home lives, while also working to help those students develop their knowledge of English, instead of smothering their most common tongue and forcing them into failure.

"But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates. We remained a loving family, bur one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness." (Page 36)

     In this section of the reading,  Rodriguez expresses the heart-breaking reality he was being forced to partake in, that being losing the once strong connection he had to his family. The more that the English language was being brought into the home, the further apart Richard and his family grew. It wasn't their fault, though, much like Ullucci expressed in her own article about poverty not being the faults of the poor. In order to accurately assimilate into society and be, not only accepted, but understood by others, Richard's entire family had to alter their entire way of life, going so far enough to damage their connection and closeness one another. Being an only child, I am extremely close to my family; we always have sit-down family dinners to talk and catch up on what's been going on during the day. I couldn't imagine giving up my relationship with them since they've always been there for me and always supported me. Knowing this, I can only assume how unbearable it was fr Rodriguez losing the close-knit relationship he had with his parents and siblings.

“They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the achievement of public individuality.” (Pages 38-39)

     Rodriguez seems to be making the point that even though he had to completely alter his lifestyle, it allowed him to get a better chance at success in today's society. Even though he had to basically erase his private life and cut practically all ties with his old Spanish-based past in order to be accepted by his peers and authoritative figures, he claims it made him much more susceptible to be successful and achieve his goals as long as his life was more influenced by English. 

One of my friends whom I've met through RIC's music department is of Armenian descent, and is currently helping the chorus that we're in to actually speak Armenian for several of our songs. Although she has grown up almost completely in an English-based community, she says that most of her family, especially her grandparents, had some difficulties coming to the United States from Armenia, especially since they came over during the time Armenian Genocide. They had to pick up their entire lives, their families, their possessions, whatever they had, and get out of the country as quickly as they could to save themselves and by coming to the U.S., had to learn how to adapt to the new culture around them.

Question to Share:

I never could truly grasp why Rodriguez titled his article, "Aria". I know the name from music, especially from Mozart's various arias for voice and one for a string quartet, but it never really explains why the author would choose a musical term for his article. Is it because his parents' native, Spanish language sounded like beautiful music to him? Just some food for thought!.

(One of Mozart's Arias that Rodriguez could have linked to the beauty of listening to the smooth, fluency of his Spanish-speaking parents)