Aria-by Richard Rodriguez

This piece written by Rodriguez, is a story about his own childhood and his struggle to maintain his individual culture and his eventual surrender to English and a parchael loss oh his cultural identity. The story begins with Rodriguez, who is a young boy, sits in an English speaking class room run by Nuns. The story begins with your Rodriguez basically afraid to speak English because he doesn't have a firm grasp of the language.

The story continues, the Nuns ask his parents to speak English at home over Spanish to help grow his vocabulary. This was precipitated by a exchange in the classroom where the teacher yelled at Rodriguez for not speaking well enough, basically. However as the family spoke more English the children eventually became very comfortable with the English language.

This development brought about large changes in the social structure of the family. No longer were the children rushing home after school they were out and about playing. In a particularly stinking portion of the he tells us about the disconnect that occurred between he and his parents. He writes about the feeling of Americanization, and truly feeling what it is like to be part of that large portion of society that knows the dominant language. This story was a story that i feel many children and even young adults go though and is very relevant today.

My personal opinion on this matter is that you should learn English. It is the primary language of this country. Everything and anything is written in English. Learning English to me is a necessity to live here it makes life easier and able for you to adjust to the culture and climate of the US. However I do feel for Rodriguez, his writings about the loss of a particular social identity makes me feel, and i know this, that you need to be able to blend you old language/heritage and your new one.

He writes about his family a lot, the loss of his mother and father, in the sense of no longer speaking. This is again something I feel bad, because they felt that could no longer communicate because of the language gap.

For some reason this story also re-enforces my opinion of the need to learn English. Making everything run smoothly and not putting the strain on family that can happen between the generations from the other country and the new "American" generation.