Father

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Rodriguez's father lost his parents when he was just eight years old and started working as an apprentice for his uncle. Despite only having a third-grade education, he left Mexico at the age of twenty with aspirations of becoming an engineer in the United States. He hoped a priest would assist him financially with his education, but this support never materialized, leading him to a series of "dark succession of warehouse, factory, and cannery jobs."

Rodriguez's father attended night school with his wife, but after a year or two, he stopped attending and waited for her outside on the school steps. By the time their children were born, he had a "clean job," initially working as a janitor for a department store and later as a dental technician. Despite this, Rodriguez recalls his father always being exhausted. He would laugh whenever his son complained about being tired from studying and reading, unable to comprehend how reading could cause fatigue, and often mocked his son's soft hands. Rodriguez's father never verbally encouraged his children to excel in school.

His father managed to provide a house in a comfortable, middle-class neighborhood "many blocks from the Mexican south side of town." However, the family still felt alienated from the predominantly white community in 1950s Sacramento. Rodriguez remembers his father being shy only when speaking English; in contrast, he was lively and outgoing when conversing in Spanish with family and friends.

Mother

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Rodriguez’s mother was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States as a young girl. She and her husband enjoyed a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle in Sacramento, California, and managed to buy a house in what Rodriguez calls a gringo neighborhood. He describes his parents as being filled with optimism and hope for their family’s future. Rodriguez’s mother had stronger English skills compared to his father and served as the main communicator with the gringo world outside their family. Once Rodriguez’s parents gained more confidence in their language abilities, his mother learned the names of everyone on their block and purchased a phone for the house.

As a young girl, Rodriguez’s mother received a high school diploma from teachers who were ‘‘too careless or busy’’ to notice she couldn’t speak English, according to her son. After high school, she worked as a typist and took pride in not needing to wear a uniform to work and in her ability to spell well without a college degree. When Rodriguez started high school, his mother returned to work in a typing position. She strongly believed that her children should receive as much education as possible.

Rodriguez’s mother was often distressed by many of her children’s choices. She lamented that as they grew older, her children were not as close ‘‘more in the Mexican style’’ as other families. When Rodriguez left for Stanford University, just one hundred miles from Sacramento, his mother couldn’t understand why the local colleges weren’t ‘‘good enough.’’ She felt uncomfortable when Rodriguez published articles mentioning the family, and she wrote to him asking him to stop exposing their private life. During the time he wrote this book, she called him Mr. Secrets because he didn’t share much about what he was doing.

Rodriguez views his parents as having great dignity and an aristocratic reserve, and he highlights their devotion to Catholicism. Both parents wanted their children to be aware that they ‘‘are Mexicans’’ and never to pretend to be from Spain.

Other Characters

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Grandmother
Rodriguez’s grandmother communicated with him in Spanish when he was a young child. However, as he began attending school...

(This entire section contains 317 words.)

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and speaking English at home and in class, understanding Spanish became more challenging for him. Despite his improved English proficiency, which sometimes hindered their communication, Rodriguez emphasizes that their mutual affection remained unchanged. She affectionately called him "Pocho"—a Spanish term meaning something colorless or bland—to playfully mock his limited Spanish skills. He interpreted it as a label for someone who had distanced himself from his cultural roots while assimilating into American society.

The last time Rodriguez saw his grandmother, she shared stories about her life in Mexico with her husband Narciso and their experiences living on a farm. She recounted her work as a seamstress and how she had to leave Rodriguez’s mother and her siblings to travel to Guadalajara for employment. She passed away a few days later when Rodriguez was nine years old.

The Priest
When Rodriguez was around four years old, a white priest from Sacred Heart Church visited the Rodriguez home for dinner. This event was significant, as Rodriguez recalls, because the priest was the first English-speaking guest ever invited to their home. The priest left behind a picture of Christ with a "punctured heart," which, as Rodriguez notes, has been displayed in every house his parents have lived in since.

Richard (Ricardo) Rodriguez
Richard Rodriguez, the son of working-class Mexican immigrants, grew up and received his education in Sacramento, California. He is the third of four children. Spanish was the primary language spoken at home, and he eagerly anticipated hearing it each day after school because it was reserved for family interactions and never used with outsiders. For Rodriguez, language clearly demarcated the boundary between public and private life. As a child, he often felt like an outsider beyond his home, with only a limited grasp of English.

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