Four Books, One Latino Life

Reading Richard Rodriguez

Ignacio F. Rodeño Iturriaga

• Publisher: Publicacions de la Universitat de València
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9788491347569
• eBook ISBN: 9788491347576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

Acclaimed by many as one of the most gifted essayists and stylists in American letters these last few decades, Richard Rodriguez has left an indelible imprint on the tradition of autobiographical writing of the nation. Rodeño's study of the four installments of Rodriguez's self-writing offers an insightful and perspicacious analysis of the evolution and the most controversial elements in this Chicano writer's production so far. Delving deeply into issues of racial and ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religious background, various types of hybridity, and different forms of socio-cultural adaptation, this book presents all kinds of incisive observations about the contested space(s) that "minority" self-writers are often pushed to occupy in the American tradition of the genre.

CHAPTER 1

Writing on Language, Education and Class: The Distinctive Memory of Richard Rodriguez

This autobiography, moreover, is a book about language.
(Hunger of Memory 7)

Richard Rodriguez’s 1982 autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, was vigorously attacked by Latinos, especially the Chicano intelligentsia. Ramón Saldívar posits that “Rodriguez chooses to assimilate without ever considering whether he acted by will or merely submitted to an unquestioned grander scheme of political ideology.” (158) Norma Alarcón argues that Rodriguez’s emphasis on individualism leads him to the “refusal of ethnicity, except as a private phenomenon.” (144) Raymund Paredes claims that “nothing reveals Rodriguez’s rigid conventionalism more clearly than his adherence to the doctrine of assimilation.” (283) Paula Moya states that “Richard Rodriguez exemplifies the situation of the neoconservative minority intellectual in the United States … tak[ing] political positions that put them at odds with traditional leftist advocates of minority rights: they oppose affirmative action, decry minority set-asides, and argue in favor of cultural assimilation.” (101-2)

At the same time, however, the book was acclaimed by critics in mainstream venues. Paul Zweig in The New York Times Book Review qualified the book as a “superb autobiographical essay […] uncannily sensitive to the nuances of language learning.” In adding that “[t]he exquisite clarity of Mr. Rodriguez’s writing is the product of long care, an attention to nuance that, one senses is not only esthetic but moral,” Zweig emphasizes the quality of the writing and the perceptiveness with which Rodriguez portrays the power of language to shape life. Alison Comey, while misspelling the Spanish, praised the English writing and the author’s eloquence in The Christian Science Monitor. Jean Strouse also nodded to the book in a respectful review in Newsweek. Time magazine also covered it, and Rodriguez was interviewed in prominent radio and television programs such as “The Today Show,” as Fr. John W. Donohue, S.J. notes in his review (403). In their accolades to the autobiography, both Zweig and Donohue are perceptive enough to point to the controversial aspect of the text: its content when it comes to bilingual education and affirmative action. Along these lines, Zweig accurately predicted that the book would be “a source of controversy among educators committed to the recent idea of bilingual education, and to other forms of special treatment, in schools, for ‘minorities’.” (his emphasis) Donohue, for his part, contrasts the “quixotic protest” that turned the author “unpopular with minority activists who consider him a coconut: brown on the outside, white on the inside” (404) with the position of Latino judges, Congressmen, community leaders, Catholic bishops, and political lobbyist who were in favor of the Federal Government’s backing of bilingual education and affirmative action.

Nevertheless, not every mainstream publication applauded the book. Susan Seidner Adler, in Commentary, stated that in this “unconvincing book” most issues are “analyzed strictly in terms of class,” which would explain why his family is caricaturized into mannerisms –his parents– or simply described –his siblings– in terms of their complexion, their job, their cars, or any other symbol denoting class status. Adler argues that this “is true of friends” as well, and that “[e]ven the reader is imagined in class terms,” what allows her to contend that Rodriguez suffers “from a sense of superiority. He is in fact guilty of nothing but being a snob.”

But, while Rodriguez affirms that language “has been the great subject of his life,” (Hunger of Memory 6) his standpoint vis-à-vis bilingual education and affirmative action also dominates his discourse in this autobiography. It is precisely because of his assimilationist posture and his rejection of bilingual education that the majority of the Chicano scholars have attacked the book and the autobiographer.

Rodriguez establishes his autobiographical voice and persona in order to weave an essay where he calls into question, and ultimately rejects, the sociopolitical ideals and programs that were inherent to the Civil Rights Movement: bilingualism and affirmative action. In rejecting them, Rodriguez is regarded as a threat to the moral authority of the Movement. It also focuses on how Rodriguez is proposing advancement of Latinos by other means than those supported by the Chicano Movement, and how the means that he intends are in direct relation to the anxiety of class that the middle layers of society often display. To this end, it is essential to pay attention to how family is depicted in this text, moreover since the autobiography deals with the coming of age of the protagonist and can be included in the Bildungsroman genre.

The Bildung of an autobiographical hero

The writing of the self that deals with the forming of identity and coming of age of the protagonist is grounded on the Bildungsroman. As such, this writing establishes its structure in certain anthropological constants that are surveyed in a diachronic manner, as well as along the topos. If the essence of the narratives of the self that are also Bildungsromane is the knowledge of the self that the protagonist acquires by means of the experiences he lives through, its narration becomes a literary variant –that is, a symbolic one– of the route to self-identification, which the protagonist –and all human beings as well– must undergo. In this sense, it is an intrinsically human path. As humans, we feed on our cultural surroundings and education is a key factor in shaping the cultural milieu in which the individual becomes aware of the self and acquires a conscience of belonging to a culture. In “Defining Bildungsroman as a Genre,” Marianne Hirsch Gottfried and David Miles posit that “the Bildungsroman maintains a peculiar balance between the social and the personal and explores their interaction.” (122) This definition of the Bildungsroman suggests that there is a tension between the individual and the communal in the process towards a textual resolution of mutual, societal and personal conflicts. This resolution can be one in which the subject ends integrated in the community, or one in which s/he remains an outcast. In either case, the genre implies a search for identity.

In other words, as Gottfried and Miles state, “Bildung is the organic unfolding of a totality of human capacities by the contact with worldly experiential powers, a process which results in an accommodation to those powers.” (122) At times, this adaptation can be best achieved, or performed, by ascertaining a model. Hence, Bildungsroman would be the process by which an individual identifies with his model, and becomes the image of that agent, as François Jost contends (98-99). It is clear, as it will be seen later, that Rodriguez identifies with and attempts to become a model that is closer to the Anglo-American cultural context and tradition, than a Mexican, Latin American, or even Hispanic one. Hunger of Memory occupies itself with this process that Jost describes in his study. In this sense, the Bildungsroman is a question of engagement, culture, society, and agency. Qualifying this process as developmental, James Hardin goes further in asserting that it is “a slippery concept” fixed to the manner in which we read a set of cultural values, and therefore the coming-of-age involves a comprehensive label for the cultural values of a given group or social layer in a specific time in history, and the attaining and absorption into the designated value system (xi-xii). Of course, in the case of Hunger of Memory, as in the case of other Latino–and diasporic– Bildungsromane, the process of coming-of-age involves friction among dissenting cultural values, in the course of searching and ascribing to an identity.

Rites are indispensable elements in the process of adjusting to a set of values, a process that one might as well call acculturation. Among those rituals, those labeled as ‘rites of initiation’ stand out in literature and, most especially, in the narratives of the self, above all in those that deal with the formative years of the protagonist, and thus are part of the genre Bildungsroman. Texts that are part of this genre recount how characters come to terms with societal quests that allow or impede complete insertion into the given social order. These rites of initiation may be also called ‘puberty rites’ or ‘tribal initiation rites’ as Mircea Eliade points out in Rites and Symbols of Initiation. If the essence of autobiographical Bildungsromane is the knowledge of the self that the protagonist acquires through the life experiences he goes through, the text itself becomes a literary variant –thus, a symbolic one, as it was pointed out earlier– of the path towards self-identification. This is an intrinsically human path, since it is not limited to the protagonist of the text but it is walked on by each and every man and woman in the process of living. An instrumental element in the process of coming-of-age and self-knowledge is the array of cultural expressions that feed our development into adulthood. Along with culture come myths and their narratives, stories that are fictional in their origin but which society accepts as truthful. As Northrop Frye states in Anatomy of Criticism, the imitation of nature in fiction does not produce reality nor truth but plausibleness (77). Consequently, truth is not a reliable image of reality but the consensus of a given collectivity with respect to a symbolic explanation about the human experience, mediated through a given cultural milieu. As Northrop Frye indicates in his study, this culturally enabled arrangement is manifested by means of expressions of a strong symbolic character. Among those, the aforementioned rites are expressions of cultural myths. And the rites of initiation are particularly recurrent in literature, especially in those writings of the self that occupy themselves with the coming of age of their characters.

In these narrative structures, the reader encounters the following pattern: the protagonist is removed from the maternal or familial custody and remains ostracized from the community. Then, under the watch of one or several members of the community, the adolescent undergoes the rites of initiation. It is then when there is a return to the origin, a regressus ad uterum, which symbolizes the death of infancy and the inception of a spiritual rebirth, a renaissance. This symbolic death is usually preceded by physical or mental undertakings, some of which can be traumatic. Once these deeds have been accomplished, the individual enters the sphere of adulthood and becomes integrated into the community. Leaving behind the religious attributes that puberty rites might have in certain cultures, and focusing on their secular aspects, contemporary persons must perform certain tasks in order to enter a category perceived as superior: that of a full-fledged member of the adult community. Initiation into the community becomes, as a result, a critical transition phase, one that is decisive and recurrent in human life. Ultimately, the individual acquires a better understanding of the self through the accomplishment of those quests within the societal context.

The structural axis of Bildungsroman is the construction of a personality which, in the course of the narration, must overcome an initiation process of self-formation in order to arrive to the experienced self. As a consequence, the protagonist of the autobiographical coming-of-age narrative is transcended by the renewed being that results from his or her own telling of the initiation quest. The subject becomes a true literary archetype, a simplified version of human life, one that is limited by the temporal parameters of the narrative. The narrative of the self, especially if it can be read as a Bildungsroman, composes a discursive model that, in turn, enhances the narrative tradition: it garners the dialectics by which the innocent self attains the experience of adult life by means of a series of undertakings that beget the death of innocence. It is precisely because of this association between ritual and Bildungsroman that the latter takes part in the universal and timeless nature of human truth, a truth that is a creative source of the literary structure. Hunger of Memory and other autobiographical Bildungsromane attempt to put on paper the way in which men and women understand how human beings are crafted. There is emphasis on the verb understand precisely because the coming-of-age process implies intellect and, as intellectual realization, it requires a language in its construction.

When addressing narratives in which the removed or isolated protagonists must overcome hurdles and complete undertakings in their search for identity, one’s mind indeed drifts towards terms such as “hero.” In fact, the term refers us to the body of ancient mythical narratives where the protagonist endures and surmounts obstacles placed in front of her/him, at times with the intervention of supernatural powers. The function of these narratives was primarily cathartic, since they illustrated the possibility of mankind to transcend their human life and gain access to the superior realm of the gods through the figure of the hero, who was regarded as the redeemer of her/his peers. Unquestionably, in Hunger of Memory, as in other contemporary autobiographical Bildungsromane one will not find supernatural elements that assist the protagonists to overcome the rites of initiation they must undergo in their path towards self-knowledge. Secularization of literature has brought to an end the demigod nature of the classic hero and contemporary ones prevail over their mundane quests immersed in the quotidian routine of their lives. Nevertheless, the ethnic and/or minority hero, in the autobiographical coming-of age narrative still fashions her/his character and her/his role as one of intercession on behalf of the rest of the community, as in the classic models. Many Latino autobiographers portray themselves as an example to be taken into account –if not to be followed altogether– by the constituency of their community.

One could argue that our contemporary heroes are devoid of the sense of triumph, of that victorious halo that comes with a happy ending. In many cases the quest of these minority or ethnic heroes ends up with a bittersweet recognition of the self. However, this is far from failure. The protagonists achieve their goal: a greater knowledge of self, a better understanding of themselves as well as of their surroundings –a habitat that oftentimes is perceived as antagonistic, if not thoroughly hostile. A substantial basis for that bittersweet feeling is the fact that loss is an integral part of the process of getting to know the self. It is humanity that begets success to contemporary heroes, since the hero’s character is repeatedly tested through continuous search. As a result, the importance lies in the process, the search itself, and not in the outcome. Along these lines, Fernando Savater makes a difference between the triumphant hero –which Savater contends is essential to sustain faith in life, hence his continuity in existence– and the tragic one by means of their correlation with social strata. While the former is aligned with expressions of popular culture, such as sports, serial movies, popular music, television …, the only acceptable hero for ‘high culture’ is the one vanquished, left behind, through whom the unfeasibility of virtue is revealed (134). This analysis can help explain why Richard Rodriguez, in Hunger of Memory, portrays himself in the end as a lonely individual who has cast off his Hispanic community, as well as seemingly rejected kinship into Anglo-American academe. At the same time, it exemplifies how his narrative gears Rodriguez towards an allegiance with the upper classes, thus echoing some afore mentioned criticism.

While our hero-protagonist ends up isolated, similarly as he found himself in the beginning and through his quest, one cannot uphold the notion that the hero returns to the start point, nor that the structure is a circular one. Due to the introspection that the coming-of-age yields, the protagonist, while in a cyclical movement, is never at the onset but in a spiral bend where the initial situation is revisited, with the exception that each time the subject has been informed, he has been consequently transformed into someone different. Hence, s/he is never at the same pre-heroic initial point. The intention here is not to negate the return but to qualify it as an informed return. In this way, Rodriguez does not return to his family in Hunger of Memory, neither to Mexico in Days of Obligation, because both connections are rendered impossible by virtue of the self-knowledge that the subject has acquired in his coming-of-age. This return to the origin, which will be discussed further in the next chapter, has a relevant function in the structure and discourse of Bildungsromane, since it supports the rites of initiation and rebirth. This function is also present in the writings of the self by means of retrospective and remembrance. In Myth and Reality, Eliade underscores the importance of knowing the origins and history of something in order to master it. The Romanian scholar parallels remembrance of an ancient myth with remembering a personal experience because in both instances the task is to remember with detail and precision what happened at the onset and subsequently (89-90). Following Eliade’s thoughts on the function of memory in recovering the past, one could argue that the autobiographer-protagonist remembers details in order to overcome her/his past, transcend time, and return to the primal instant, that which anticipates the renewal of the individual. Memory, therefore, unites the human nature of introspection and the impulse for self-knowledge, both present in the narrative structure of rites and of the narratives of the self. In a similar way in which heroes trace their past actions and learn about their identity by means of the remembering of their development in the imaginary time of narration, the author-protagonist of the narratives of self crafts a coherent I with the agreement of the reader, since the reader is an inherent member of the autobiographical pact. This coherent I tries to uncover by way of remembrance and memory the author-protagonist’s personal identity. David Hume considers memory as the origin of the notion of causality, which builds up the structure of the self in a sequence of correlations between cause and effect (196). It is through memory that the autobiographer acquires conscience of the self and constructs her/his identity. In turn, these retrospective journeys that the author-protagonist embarks on are reflected in the self-consciousness of the reader. In The Act of Reading, Wolfgang Iser posits that reading does not just involve what is contained in the text but that the reader finds in the act of reading the possibility of formulating herself/himself that which may not be articulated in the text and, consequently, find that which escapes her/his conscience. In this way the remembering conscience of the protagonist helps us to evoke our own memories, to define our own experience, to project our values, and to delineate a sketch of our consciousness by dint of our interpretation of the gist of the written text. This is particularly pertinent in the case of the literature of US Latinos and other minorities. These texts, given the nature of their composition, either consciously or unconsciously appeal to the community they ascribe to. Therefore, the personal experience described in the texts can be perceived beyond the particular and be extrapolated to the community at large, even if this was not the explicit intention on the part of the author.

This bridge between the protagonist’s experience and the reader’s one is underscored precisely through the rites themselves. Rites are the social expression of an individual experience which every human encounters. As the reader has undergone –to a greater or a lesser degree– the same or a similar introspection that the protagonist has been subjected to, it is not far-fetched to establish a correlation. This is perhaps more obvious among members of the same social bracket, who can see echoes of their own personal trajectory in the development of the textual persona they have in front. Alternatively, if the education that results from the rites of initiation that characters go through is a product of experiencing life rather than a social training, one cannot but infer that knowledge is an effect of the confrontation between individual and society, and this is something that occurs in both literature and real life. In one and the other, it can be witnessed the gradual process of acculturation –as opposed to indoctrination– by which the individual assimilates guidelines of different nature that society provides. These parameters come from different social clusters surrounding the person: family, school, class bracket, gender, sexual orientation, etc. These are, precisely, the norms that are sanctified by the rites. Then again, all these social models form interacting forces with the self. By means of these forces, the individual –be it real or literary– develops her/his own identity and personal entity. In consequence, one can add that the rites of initiation offer an interpretation that clarifies the balance of both opposing forces as well as cooperative ones, which together design the personal, non-transferable maturing of the individual. Therefore, as an integral part of the human community, the person develops, grows. The subject is not a given, but it is formed. The essence of an individual lies not in an a priori ontological categor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Writing on Language, Education, and Class: The Distinctive Memory of Richard Rodriguez
• Chapter 2 Journey to the Origin, Travel to the Destination
• Chapter 3 Browning the Argument, Shifting the Paradigm
• Chapter 4 Darling Contemplations
• Conclusion
• Bibliography