Zedrick Ceasar
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APX 0500
Ruth Boeder
July 21, 2015
Summary/Response “Aria: A memoir of a Bilingual Childhood”
In this story the author Richard Rodriguez’s main idea is to display the challenges and
change that bilingual children face by using his real life experiences as examples. Rodriguez
describes the challenges of distinguishing the difference between Spanish and English, the
challenge of speaking “proper” English, and the emotion Spanish left on him as a child and adult.
Spanish was Rodriguez’s private family language and English was the public speaking language
he encountered every time he stepped out of the house. The most important challenge Rodriguez
faced was picking a primary language. English became the public language for him while
Spanish became the private language (209). Along that process Richard and his siblings became
more distant with their parents due to their lack of English (211). The distance of their
relationship increased the more Rodriguez learned English because the effort his father invested
into learning English was the exact opposite. In the reading “Aria: A memoir of a Bilingual
Childhood” Rodriguez claimed his father’s lack of “proper” English influenced his character of
silence, but he later he revels that his father’s characteristics of silence didn’t exist while
speaking Spanish (212). Rodriguez closes his text by speaking on the loss of his native language
Spanish, which can be incorporated with the loss of his relationship with his parents.
Surprisingly Rodriguez still referred to this experience and change as a positive outcome due to
his relationship and bond with English.
While reading a passage based of the challenges and change that bilingual children face,
from the perspective of a person from a one way language street, relating to the text and writer
Rodriguez was challenging. As a reader I predicted that the relationship with Rodriguez and his
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father would spark a sense of engagement into the language of Spanish for him. The closing of
the text proved me wrong “Once I learned the public language, it would never again be easy for
me to hear intimate family voices” (212). Although I ‘am not bilingual I could relate to the text
due to the relationship and distance with Rodriguez and his parents. Even though I vividly
understood and respected his decisions to engage in English more because he believed it was
publicly better and more comfortable for him, I still disagree. The claim that children can’t learn
more than one language and bilingual educators are wrong is just a bias statement based upon
Rodriguez failure to adapt to two languages. In my opinion Rodriguez had the opportunity to
stay engaged with his langue, family, and comfortable sounds he heard growing up as a child.
Rodriguez simply didn’t have the interest. His energy and interest was invested into learning the
language of English, and joining the norm. He displayed earlier characteristics of insecurity by
forcing himself to engage in English because it was the norm in school. In the text Rodriguez
give a glimpse of his outcome when he felt the label of a “problem child” in the classrooms
because of his language (208). He previews more actions that foreshadowed his outcome of
dropping his native language when he owned up to the title of being an American boy only at age
eight (210). The narrow minded perspective that Spanish was a ghetto language was the last
piece of foreshadowing in this text (210). The most vital piece of evidence in my opinion that
displays Rodriguez bias claim of bilingual children. That evidence concludes that Rodriguez
claim originated from his fixed mindset on his native language of Spanish.