Cycle Two: Schooling, Cultural Assimilation, and Social Mobility

          Reading Hunger for Memory brought back so many feelings and memories from my own childhood. I remember feeling as though I was going to school in a completely different place than I was coming home to, embarrassment over my parents’ accents when speaking English in public, and my family’s views of public and private life. I also thought I knew exactly where I stood on affirmative action and my reasons behind my stance but this book has questioned that for me. This book has made me question many thoughts and ideas I once held with such concrete belief.

            From the first couple pages of this book, I found myself saying, “Yup, yea, I remember that feeling” to so many of the things Rodriguez mentions of his childhood. “We were the people with the noisy dog. We were the people who raised pigeons and chickens. We were the foreigners on the block.” (1982, p. 11) My family didn’t have a dog or raise chickens but we were the only ones who hung our laundry on lines in the backyard to dry. Even our undergarments were hung on the line for neighbors to see. I was in middle school and mortified. When I asked my mom and grandma why we had to do this they would respond that that is how they dried their clothes in India and why did I have to be so embarrassed of my culture. Our house was the one that smelled like spices all the way down the driveway. “Why does your house smell like that?” my friends would ask. I would mumble an answer and change the subject. I would get embarrassed when my parents would play Hindi music too loudly. Why can’t we listen to American music I would ask, in which I would get the response, “why are you embarrassed by our culture?”

            My mom has always spoken English well, with a slight Indian accent. My dad has a stronger accent and still sometimes struggles with the pronunciation of certain English words. It doesn’t bother me even for a second now, but I didn’t always feel that way. “It was more troubling to hear my parents speak in public…-it was unsettling to hear my parents struggle with English…In adulthood, I am embarrassed by childhood fears.” (1982, p. 11) I am ashamed now by my actions as a child. I am so proud of my parents and all the have accomplished coming to this country without family, friends, insight into American culture, food, or language. My dad’s first job in country was as a dishwasher in a restaurant making $3 an hour. Then he moved on to a factory job where he worked for years until he got two of his fingers chopped off by a faulty machine. (Thankfully, the doctors were able to take the skin from his forearm and reattach both fingers.) It makes me sick to think that I was embarrassed by my parents accents and the fact that we were different from everyone else, but when you are a teenager, all you want to do so desperately is be part of the crowd, not stick out of it.

            I once heard a Chinese-American comedian say that she felt as though as went to school in America and came home to China. I could not agree more. I felt the same way, except I was coming home to India. My grandmother came to live with us when I was seven years old. That is when started learning Gujarati, a North Indian language. So, unlike Rodriguez, I learned to speak English first. I was never an ELL student. My grandmother was appalled that I could not speak the language of my family so when she came to live with us, it was only Gujarati in the house was I came home after school. Why didn’t my parents teach me their language? Same reason that Rodriguez’s parents decided they would start talking English in the house when the nuns asked them to, “What would they not do for their child’s well-being?” (1982, p. 20). Education came first. They wanted me to do well in school so they taught me the language that I would need to use there. They wanted me to get a good education and have opportunities that they did not have. Because of my grandma, I became fluent in Gujarati and am now teaching it to my son.

            All while reading this book, I kept thinking what did Rodriguez’s parents and siblings think when they read his book? He is giving away so many secrets of his family; shelling out so many intimate details of feeling divided from his parents and feeling like education separated him from his culture. His parents must have been hurt, confused and, probably angry. One thing I think many ethnic cultures have in common is you do not tell your private family life to “outsiders”. “No matter how friendly they are in public, no matter how firm their smiles, my parents never forget when they are in public. My mother must use a high-pitched voice when she addresses people who are not relatives. It is a tone of voice I have all my life heard her use away from the house.” (1982, p. 191). I could have written these words. All my life I have heard my parents and grandmother tell me that our private affairs stay private. All the disagreements, fights, yelling, sibling bickering; none of it leaves the household. I am never supposed to talk about it with my friends or anyone else. My mom used to come home from work and tell us about the troubles her co-workers teenagers would get into, who got suspended from school, who got pregnant from her gas station working boyfriend, etc. “Why would you want to tell people that” she would ask my dad? Why would you tell strangers about the bad things happening in your family’s lives? My mom has been working at the same place, with the same people for the past 17 years and she still only tells them certain things. My heart actually hurt a little when Rodriguez’s mother asked him to write about something else other than their family, “please”, because I understand the thinking behind that request.

            I have always been a proponent of affirmative action. My reason behind it was that it is not that easy for a child from a socially disadvantaged area to do well in school. I think back to my students in Detroit. Even in second grade, they were battling parents with drug abuse problems, one or more parents being incarcerated, violence in their homes and neighborhoods, issues of having enough food to eat on a daily basis and so much more. For them to make it all the way through grade school and graduated from college is an amazing feat. Kids in the suburbs do not have those issues, for the most part (there are always exceptions). But even though students from socially disadvantaged areas graduate, they still have no chance when compared to a student from a suburban school that graduates high school with a higher GPA, AP classes, and membership and leadership roles in school committees. They need someone to give them a break. But then Rodriguez brought to light what affirmative action is really missing. “The strategy of affirmative action, finally, did not take seriously the educational dilemma of disadvantaged students. They need good early schooling!” (1982, p. 162). Affirmative action was allowing students into colleges that they were not prepared for! Because of that, they were struggling in their classes, dropping out, or even worse, having mental breakdowns. The biggest problem is not that colleges and universities do not have enough diversity on campus or on staff but that our educational system is not preparing all students equally for colleges and universities. Reading that and coming to that realization was like a light bulb turning on in my head. You can accept as many “minorities” into your colleges but it is not going to help if they are not prepared for the curriculum.

            This book brought back so many feelings and emotions that I had not thought about in a long time. It is comforting to know that there are other people that went through some of the same issues with identity and culture as I did. It brings to light that our educational system still has such a long way to go in making education an equal opportunity for all students. I feel proud that Richard Rodriguez was able to become so successful in his life when he entered school only knowing 50 English words, but I feel sad that in doing so, he lost some of his culture in the process.