Rodríguez, Richard (1944-)

Richard Rodríguez is a Mexican American writer, born in San Francisco on July 31, 1944, of Mexican immigrant parents. In the context of bilingual education, he is noteworthy for his divergent thinking on the subject of language, and the controversy his autobiographical writings have elicited. This entry describes his life and career.

Rodríguez attended Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a doctorate in English Renaissance literature. He later spent a year in London as a Fulbright scholar. Rodríguez's initial intention was to pursue a career in academia, but in 1976, he opted to become a freelance writer. Throughout this period, he analyzed, questioned, and came to terms with how his education had affected his life permanently, which resulted in the 1982 publication of his autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodríguez.

His autobiography sheds light on a journey of acculturation and assimilation that began at the age of 6 when Rodríguez entered school speaking only his native language, Spanish, and continued throughout his school life, through the awarding of his doctorate. It is a compelling narrative of his journey from the private Spanish-speaking world of his home, to the encompassing, dominant, and powerful public world of English. He narrates how his passage toward becoming an assimilated American moving from the [Page 721]Spanish-speaking world of his family was only achieved after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture.

In his published work, Rodríguez makes a distinction between what he calls “public” and “private” language. In his private world of childhood, Spanish was the language of intimacy and warmth. It was the language spoken at the Rodríguez home as he was growing up in the 1950s. Rodríguez's teachers (from Catholic school) urged his parents to stop speaking their native tongue in the home. The rationale for switching from Spanish to English in the home was to help the young child adapt to the English-speaking world in which he was to develop and succeed as an American. The family accepted the recommendation of the teacher, and young Richard went through his school years in an English-only environment. Dutifully, Richard embraced English as his public language even though it meant that the family must make awkward and uncomfortable adjustments to their patterns of interaction.

Rodríguez believes that, in his case, Spanish was the private language and should not be the language of instruction at school. He is highly critical of learning about one's private life and culture in school and feels that the trend to learn in one's private language and culture results in disengagement from the public world. Although Rodríguez does not think that the private language of the home should be made into a public language in school, he does not contest the reverse: making the public language of English into another private language that displaces the first private language of the home. He believes the public language should be the language of instruction rather than the home language because public language is the language used with strangers.

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