The Slightly Unpopular Opinion

After reading the the Richard Rodriguez and Barbara Mellix pieces, I found myself with a slightly different (and seemingly unpopular) opinion on who was "right" and who was a "cop-out," as Amanda called Rodriguez.   Having been born an native English speaker, and a standard British- English speaker at that, I had a hard time connecting to many of the literacy autobiographies we have read in class thus far.  I wasn't incorrectly tracked in school.  I did not have to give up my native tongue to fit in in the academic world.  I didn't struggle with how my spoken English and written English differed.  Therefore, reading thee articles was a bit of a foreign topic for me.  I felt that I should just shut up and listen to the students opinions who have more personal experience with the subject.  But hearing a few students call Rodriguez out for his, what I think is a beautifully written article, really made me think about a few things.

Both my mother and my father were born outside the Unites States.  My father, who emigrated from England, obviously had no language barriers, except maybe mixing up the first and ground floors from time to time and calling cotton candy candy floss.  My mother, on the other hand, had an extremely hard time learning English.  She moved to the US from Iran after completing her undergraduate work at the University of Tehran.  When she first stepped foot in America, my mother didn't speak a single word of English.  I'm sure she experienced many of the issues discussed in these literacy autobiographies, but my mother never seemed to lose any part of her language or culture. She still participated in cultural holidays, she spoke in Farsi to her family and friends often, and her parents, despite not understanding her academic goals, were incredibly supportive and tried to inform themselves on topics she studied at Loyola in their native Farsi. 

Reading the Rodriguez piece, which seemed to make a few students very angry, just made me a little sad.  It would seem that Rodriguez and his family just gave up on one another.  Rodriguez walled himself up in a self-imposed isolation to complete his studies, and his parents didn't care enough tot attempt to understand his work.  Not to say that I will ever understand the struggle of having to give up a part of your language and culture to survive in a specific field, but I almost prefer that to creating two distinct personalities and ways of communicating, like in the Mellix article. 

There is my unpopular, but truthful opinion.  I don't think there is anything wrong with creating a new language identity for yourself to succeed in certain fields, but I also think that you have to give up your language and culture to do so.  Learning to speak English and succeeding in her field of academics made my mother even more Persian if that is possible.  Because she couldn't speak Farsi on a daily basis to her peers, my mother went home and devoured news from her home.  She not only maintained her native tongue, she enhanced it.