closeness.

Rodriguez says that his parents' decision to give up Spanish at home had a devastating impact on family cohesion. He maintains that he suddenly felt less motivation to rush home after school. The home was no longer a magical place where one could speak a special language among cherished comrades.

Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home among those with whom I felt intimate . . . We were no longer so close, no longer bound tightly together by the knowledge of our separateness from los gringos.

According to Rodriguez, his new fluency in English led to fewer interactions between him and his parents. His siblings had a similar experience. Rodriguez asserts that his greatest regret centered on how the change affected his father. Previously effusive and charismatic in his native Spanish, Rodriguez's father now retreated into near silence. For his part, Rodriguez believes that change was forced upon his parents, without regard for their personal happiness. Thus, Rodriguez argues that both public and private identities are as necessary to personal fulfillment as they are to social cohesion.

In his essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” Richard Rodriguez questions the wisdom of the push for bilingual education.  Among the counter-arguments he considers are the following:

• He initially defines bilingual education, in very neutral terms, as

a program that seeks to permit non-English-speaking children, many from lower-class homes, to use their family language as the language of school.

• By implication, he suggests the argument that it is not possible to grow up among whites and still retain one’s Hispanic cultural identity.
• By implication, he concedes the argument that members of minority groups often do face real discrimination from members of majority populations.
• He concedes that it is possible for members of minority groups to feel alienated when participating in the culture of the “majority” group.
• He implicitly concedes that not only minority children but even minority adults can feel intimidated when participating in the culture of the majority.
• He explicitly concedes that

Supporters of bilingual education today imply that students like me miss a great deal by not being taught in their family’s language.

• He implicitly concedes that Spanish-speaking students often feel afraid in English-based classrooms.
• He concedes that when Spanish-speaking students are forced to speak English at school, they often lose their earlier senses of their homes as special places.
• He concedes that if Spanish-speaking children learn to speak English, the entire family is affected in ways that lead to greater integration of the whole family with the culture of the majority.
• He paraphrases bilingual educators who believe that Spanish-speaking children lose a certain amount of their individuality if they are forced to speak English.
• He paraphrases bilingual educators as believing that minority students should be exposed to their cultural differences from majority culture.
• He paraphrases bilingual educators who claim to want to ensure that children are well-educated.

In short, Rodriguez concedes, alludes to, and/or paraphrases the arguments of his opponents while still maintaining and arguing for his own contrary positions.

Narrative contributes in a number of different ways to the effectiveness of “Aria,” the opening chapter of Richard Rodriguez’s book Hunger of Memory. Such ways include the following:

• Rodriguez begins the chapter by describing his first day in grade school, when his vocabulary was limited to less than fifty English words. His thus makes us doubly sympathetic to him: first by emphasizing his youth, and secondly by emphasizing his lack of proficiency in English. He makes us want to “root” for him for both reasons, and the skill with which the opening sentence is written immediately implies that he has long since overcome whatever deficiencies in English he may once have had.
• By beginning by telling us about his childhood, he introduces abstract issues (such as multiculturalism and bilingualism) by anchoring them to actual lives, including his own. He doesn’t deal with them from a distance but makes us see the relevance of his own life to the arguments he will later make.
• By setting his narrative in the past, he allows us to consider how things may have changed, culturally and socially, since his youth.
• As Rodriguez himself says about his reason for opening with narrative,

Memory teaches me what I know of these matters; the boy reminds the adult. I was a bilingual child, a certain kind – socially disadvantaged – the son of working-class parents, both Mexican immigrants.

• As the preceding quotation suggests, Rodriguez narrates not only the story of his own life but the story of his family. And, by doing so, he symbolically narrates the stories of other young immigrant children and their families, whose stories may resemble the one he tells.
• By narrating a personal story, Rodriguez allows himself to deal with the real human intricacies, complexities, and complications that abstract issues can raise for particular human beings. He doesn’t just make generalizations; he grounds his generalizations in his own experiences. He doesn’t just challenge opponents by offering statistics and other abstract data; he responds to opponents by writing as someone who has actually experienced the problems and opportunities he is discussing.

In short, Rodriguez uses narrative quite effectively in “Aria,” particularly in the ways already mentioned.