RODRIGUEZ, Richard The Hunger of Memory

The Hunger of Memory
The Education of Richard Rodriguez

An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white, pg. 9

It was the first time I had heard anyone name me in English. pg. 9

I grew up in a house where the only regular guests were my relations. pg. 11

Spanish speakers, rather, seemed related to me, for I sensed that we shared – through our language – the experience of feeling apart from los gringos. pg. 14

We pieced together new words by taking, say, an English verb and giving it Spanish endings. pg. 17

On the other hand, the words I heard neighborhood kinds call their parents seemed equally unsatisfactory. Mother and Father; Ma, Papa, Pa, Dad, Pop (how I hated the all-American sound of that last word especially) –all these terms I felt were unsuitable, not really terms of address for my parents. pg. 23

But my father was not shy, I realized, when I’d watch him speaking Spanish with relatives. Using Spanish, he was quickly effusive. Especially when talking with other men, his voice would spark, flicker, flare alive with sounds. In Spanish, he expressed ideas and feeling she rarely revealed in English. pg. 24

The bilingualists insist that a student should be reminded of his difference from other in mass society, his heritage. But they equate mere separateness with individuality. The fact is that only in private, with intimates – is separateness from the crowd a prerequisite for individuality. pg 26

He wanted to know what she had said. I started to tell him, to say – to translate her Spanish words into English. The problem was, however, that though I knew how to translate exactly what she had told me, I realized that any translation would distort the deepest meaning of her message: pg. 31

Just as Spanish would have been a dangerous language for me to have used at the start of my education, so black English would be a dangerous langue  to use in the schooling  of teenagers for whom it reinforces feelings of public separateness. pg. 34

I couldn’t forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student. pg. 47

On the other side Mother is ironing, the wireless  is on, someone is singing a snatch of song or Father says intermittently whatever come into his head. The boy has to cut himself off mentally, so as to do his homework, as well as he can. pg. 49

I came to idolize my grammar school teacher.  … trusting their every direction.  Any book they told me to read, I read – then waited for them to tell me which books I enjoyed. pg. 52

It saddened my mother to learn that some relatives forced their children to start working right after high school. To her children she would say, ‘Get all the education you can.’ pg. 56

Each course had its own book. And the information gathered from a book was unquestioned.  pg. 63

I came to enjoy the lonely good company of books. pg. 66

A book so enjoyable to read couldn’t be very ‘important.’ Another summer I determined to read all the novels of Dickens. Reading his fat novels, I loved the feeling I got – after the first hundred pages – of being at home in a fictional world where I cared about what was going to happen to them. And I bothered me that I was forced away at the conclusion, when the fiction closed tight, like a fortune teller’s fist – the futures of all the major characters neatly resolved. pg. 67

I needed to keep looking at the book jacket comments to remind myself what the text was about.  Nevertheless, with the special patience and superstition of a scholarship boy, I looked at every word of the text. pg. 69

They must develop the skill of memory long before they become truly critical thinkers. pg. 73

After only two or three months in the reading room of the British Museum, it became clear that I had joined a lonely community. pg. 74

When I was a boy, anyone not Catholic was defined by the fact and the term non-Catholic.  pg. 82

I could have told you the names of persons in public life who were Catholics. pg. 82

I noted which open doors, which front room windows disclosed a crucifix. pg. 82

I would write at the top of my arithmetic or history homework the initials Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  pg. 85

But I saw the picture too often to pay it much heed. pg. 87

I knew- and was terrified to know- that there was one unforgivable sin (against the Holy Ghost): the sin of despair.  pg. 88

God the Father was not so much a stern judge as One with the power to change our lives. My family turned to God not in guilt so much as in need. pg. 90

I was also impressing on my memory the spelling of hundreds of words, grammar rules, division and multiplication tables. The nuns deeply trusted the role of memorization in learning. Not coincidentally, they were excellent teachers of basics. pg. 94

On the few occasions when secular Sacramento took up the sacred calendar they got it all wrong. Their Christmas ended in late afternoon on Christmas Eve. pg. 100

In church, Christmas began at midnight mass, Christmas Eve. And the holy season continued until the Feast of Epiphany, the sixth of January… pg . 100

Latin, the nuns taught us, was a universal language. pg. 104

The mass is less ornamental; it has been ‘modernized,’ tampered with, demythologized, deflated.  pg. 107

With them I normally will observe the politesse of secular society concerning religion – say nothing about it. pg. 115

When I was a boy the white summer sun of Sacramento would darken me so, my T-shirt would seem bleached against my slender dark arms. My mother would see me come up the front steps. She’d wait for the screen door to slam at my back. ‘You look like a negrito,’ she’d say, angry,  pg. 121

It was the woman’s spoken concern: the fear of having a dark-skinned son or daughter. Remedies were exchanged. pg. 124

Surely those uneducated and poor will remain most vulnerable to racism. It was not coincidence that the leadership of the southern civil rights movement was drawn mainly from a well-educated black middle class. Even in the south of the 1950’s, all blacks were not equally black. pg. 161

I needed to tell myself that the new minority students were foolish to think themselves unchanged by their schooling. pg. 171

I had long before accepted the fact that education exacted a great price for its equally great benefits. pg. 172