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Richard Rodriguez Biography

Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez (born July 31, 1944) is an American writer who became famous as the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), a narrative about his intellectual development.

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Richard Rodriguez Quotes

Bilingual-education advocates say it's important to teach a child in his or her family's language. I say you can't use family language in the classroom - the very nature of the classroom requires that you use language publicly.

Advocates, Child, Children, Important, Use

For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing brother. Where diversity is shared - where I share with you my difference - that can be valuable. But the simple fact that we are unlike each other is a terrifying notion. I have often found myself in foreign settings where I became suddenly aware that I was not like the people around me. That, to me, is not a pleasant discovery.

Brother, Differences, Fact, Simple, Terrifying

Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in us as a culture that wanted to be on the move, that wanted to get out.

Cheap, Culture, Law, Move, Moving, Way

The Indians had to be either killed, or herded into reservations, which were essentially concentration camps, and forgotten. Their history had to be absolutely obliterated so that we could believe that we were living on virgin soil.

Believe, Forgotten, History, Soil

Now we have this idea that, not only do you go to first grade to learn your family's language, but you go to a university to learn about the person you were before you left home.

Firsts, Home, Ideas, Language, University

Suddenly the land is haunted by all these dead Indians. There is this new fascination with the Southwest, with places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, where people come down from New York and Boston and dress up as Indians. When I go to Santa Fe, I find real Indians living there, but they are not involved in the earth worship that the American environmentalists are so taken by. Many of these Indians are interested, rather, in becoming Evangelical Christians.

Christian, Down, Evangelical, Indians, New York, Real

Who knows what Yale thought it was getting when it hired Richard Rodriguez? The people who offered me the job thought there was nothing wrong with that. I thought there was something very wrong. I still do. I think race-based affirmative action is crude and absolutely mistaken.

Action, Affirmative, Jobs, Race, Thinking, Wrong

The average age in the U. S. is now thirty-three, whereas Mexico gets younger and younger, retreats deeper and deeper into adolescence. Mexico is fifteen. Mexico is wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and wandering around Tijuana looking for a job, for a date, for something to put on her face to take care of the acne.

Adolescence, Average, Face, Hard, Jobs, Rocks

I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten.

Children, Conspire, Reunion, Spring, Thinking

I became a writer not because my father was one - my father made false teeth for a living. I became a writer because the Irish nuns who educated me taught me something about bravery with their willingness to give so much to me.

Became, Bravery, Educated, Father, Give, Giving

The Census Bureau is thinking of creating a new category because so many kids don't know how to describe themselves using the existing categories. I call these kids the "Keanu Reeves Generation," after the actor who has a Hawaiian father and a Welsh mother.

Categories, Existing, Father, Generation, Kids, Mother

So, rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language.

College, Confident, Fact, Native Language, Opposites, Several

Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this secret that has been going on for more than two hundred years. The intermarriage of the Indian and the African in America, for example, has been constant and thorough. Colin Powell tells us in his autobiography that he is Scotch, Irish, African, Indian, and British, but all we hear is that he is African.

America, Example, Powell, Scotch, Two

Mexicans who come to America today end up opposing assimilation. They say they are "holding on to their culture. " To them, I say, "If you really wanted to hold on to your culture, you would be in favor of assimilation. You would be fearless about swallowing English and about becoming Americanized. You would be much more positive about the future, and much less afraid. That's what it means to be Mexican.

America, Come, Hold, Mean, Mexican, Swallowing

Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's great federalist and apologist, has coined a wonderful term, la raza cósmica, "the cosmic race," a new people having not one race but many in their blood.

Blood, Federalist, People, Race, Term

Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality.

Evidence, Human, Immortality, Unhappiness

But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home.

America, Country, Home, Leave

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five blocks. That is not Mexico; that is some crude Americanism you have absorbed.

Block, Crude, Fool, Know, Men, Thinking

There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers.

Deeply, Personal, Revealed, Stranger, Strangers, Things

The university has become so stultified since the sixties. There is so much you can't do at the university. You can't say this, you can't do that, you can't think this, and so forth. In many ways, I'm free to range as widely as I do intellectually precisely because I'm not at a university. The tiresome Chicanos would be after me all the time. You know: "We saw your piece yesterday, and we didn't like what you said," or, "You didn't sound happy enough," or, "You didn't sound proud enough. "

Happy, Piece, Sound, Thinking, Yesterday

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