Response: Rodriguez

Rosie Caldwell
Professor M. Boland
English 329

Response: Rodriguez, Richard. “The Achievement of Desire.” Hunger of Memory.

The idea of creativity and creating something unique and never-before-thought-of is a little ridiculous, but likewise can be said by the idea of being "hindered by the constraints of their attempts at originality." By simply applying your own views and your own words, you are creating something different. Ideas are built upon each other and ideas are shared, expanded upon and often evolve or shift with the introduction of other ideas or outside sources. The discomfort that Rodriguez expressed....I thought.....was misplaced. Like him, people can be so insecure about not creating something original... but as long as they add a different element or see a different facet, they are creating something different and interesting.

The issue with the separation from family seemed a little odd to me as well. Although I come from a very well educated family, I have friends who are not formally educated beyond high school. I feel no discomfort or a need to distinguish between them and myself- there is no uneasiness or hyper-sensitivity to the fact that they might not know what I am talking about, or might be confused by some of my references... because I see that they know things that I do not. I realize that they have different knowledge that is not inferior or superior to mine. I did not really see his disconnect.... and thought it was interesting that I have heard these sentiments before from other people. People mention how they have to become a different person in order to avoid discomfort - they have to dumb down or try to impress with excess information and academic references....I'm glad to say that I don't feel this need :)

Comment on Fredrick Douglas

Rosie Caldwell
English 329

Douglas, Frederick. "Narrative of the Life Of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave"

Sean commented on the idea that being literate and having a working knowledge about the world is important. Reading this article and Sean’s response from it makes me think of ignorance is bliss compared to the idea that we, as a society, have an obligation be well educated and know how the world works. Because when a society is uneducated or unaware of things- they are putting themselves in a position of vulnerability. And uneducated population can fall victim to their leaders (as we have seen lately within our own country) If you do not know your rights, you cannot enforce them, if you do not know what is happening in the political realms, then you are not fully equipped to make decisions about the representatives that will be making the laws that will govern you and others. Sean states that “Although it will give us knowledge of the evils in the world, I feel that it is important for us to learn these issues and struggles that have taken place in our history so that we can understand where we, as a society, come from. We should not remain ignorant and illiterate so that we cannot feel the agony Douglass felt. We need to feel the agony as well as the ecstasy from literacy if we are to learn about ourselves and those that came before us: how they thought, what they did, and what they wrote.” I could not say it better…. education may bring to light the harsh truths or the horrors in the world, but it will also be a means of better understanding where your surroundings and the way the world works….

reespawnz 2 shawn tuker preesees

I cannot stress how emphatically I agree with the idea that students must shake off other people's perceptions to come to hear their true creative voice. It is precisely for this reason that I have endeavored to become a creative writer and a teacher to pass such liberating and explorative concepts to students in high school. I feel that the dichotomatic nature of the intelligent and intellectual writer must be identified and embraced and allowed to exist to allow said nature to mediate the creative genius of the writer.

A.J.'s Response to Sherman's Viva La Chimichanga

While I cannot identify with the “choose your own ending books,” I can identify completely with the appreciation that accompanies a well written horror piece. I believe the “grim fantasy” composed with elements of peril and bloodshed to be rather addicting and cathartic. As a leisure activity, who would pass up the opportunity to escape into a fictional world apart from our everyday burdens? The problem exists when reading become mandatory, an assigned task. When reading is required and expected, it becomes additional weight added to the already numerous burdens we must carry.

A.J.'s Response to Sean Tucker's Rodriguez Precis

I could not agree more that individuals endeavoring to make successful strides in any form of writing should strive past the intimidation that accompanies the writing process. After all, there will always exist a writer whose overall semantics remain far superior. Though it is quite difficult, as specified, to compose anything out of “complete original thought,” it is necessary for the aspiring writer, in any forum, to give him or herself credit for making the attempt to think beyond the boundaries of what has already been set in place. Sure, it takes effort and talent to write. However, it takes an equally creative effort to draw from an influence and compose something beautiful in and of itself. So, along with not worrying about “how dull or imitative their writing is,” I believe the ability for a student to recognize his or her successes to be equally important.

Rodriguez Précis

Sean Tucker
Professor Mary Boland
English 329
27 January 2009
Rodriguez Précis

Rodriguez, Richard. “The Achievement of Desire.” Hunger of Memory. Scribd.com, 3 Apr. 2008. Web. 25 Jan 2009.

In “The Achievement of Desire,” Richard Rodriguez reflects on his experience as a student from grammar school through his life as a graduate student. He explains that he was the type of role model student that the teachers loved—always reading, asking questions, and listening to their every word. Other people would often say to him, “Your parents must be proud.” Despite all of the praise and recognition Rodriguez received, he explains that he was “a bad student” and was “unconfident” and “sad.” This paradox comes from the way Rodriguez described himself as a “the scholarship boy” who is “an imitative and unoriginal pupil.” Rodriguez came to this conclusion when he read Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy while searching through various Education texts to find something written about students like him. He felt he had changed dramatically from what his parents were and what he was before he began to progress through school.
What happened to Rodriguez was that as he progressed successfully through school, he began to drift further away emotionally and physically from his parents. His parents were working class Mexican immigrants that could not speak English very well and were not educated in the traditional sense, i.e. it appears that they may not have been high school graduates. Rodriguez’s education began to make him feel quite different from his parents and he was “least prepared for the change….he goes home and sees in his parents a way of life not only different but starkly opposed to that of the classroom. (He enters the house and hears his parents talking in ways his teachers discourage).” He was angry about the differences between his parents and himself but then became engulfed and enraptured with his education. He knew he was different but he still embraced his learning and he pressed on. It wasn’t until he realized that he belonged to a very lonely academic community, the ones that spend hours in the library without uttering a word to anyone or making any kind of friendly gesture to the one sitting next to them, that he decided to take a break from his dissertation and stay with his parents for the summer. He still had the realization that he was different from them, but he was “relieved by how easy it was to be home. Yet, he still “remained an academic” by constantly contemplating his relationship with his parents and how they did not do the same. Conversely, his way of thinking, due to his educational background, did allow him to do this and without it, Rodriguez feels that he could not and would never realize the importance of it. In the end, he realizes that his realization of this and his “desire of the past” had indeed completed his education.
What was most insightful for me in this piece is that although Rodriguez knew he was changing and becoming so different from his parents, he still pressed on with his education. He admits that he’s no genius. In fact, he claims quite the opposite. He claims that all he ever did was regurgitate what his teachers and professors taught him, i.e. he had no original thoughts of his own. However, I feel the opposite. Indeed, Rodriguez had been building himself into the accomplished writer that he is today. He failed to realize that he was going through a learning process that involved practicing skills and, yes, sometimes imitating those that were accomplished in these skills in order for him to develop his own original thoughts and ideas. The point here is that no one learns anything in a vacuum of complete original thought. Instead, we learn from others that we admire and learn from those we dislike as well. I fell that if students can learn this point and not worry about how dull or imitative their writing is, then, perhaps, these students will feel free to just write and not be hindered by the constraints of or their attempts at originality.

Viva La Chimichanga

Sherman Aspacio
Professor Boland
Eng. 329 Auto #2
28 January 2009
The first time a book affected me in an overwhelmingly influential way was when I exhausted all of the options of my first ‘choose your own adventure’ book, Silver Wings. I would explore (cheat) all of the different options in the book and never remove my finger from the last section of the book I read, in fear that I would prematurely end my story. I got the book from R.I.F., or, reading is fundamental, a free book give-away that my elementary school sponsored. I was utterly engaged into this book for three days, systematically hunting down the next progression and never feeling satisfied until the webs of choices lined up into the best possible outcome for my vicarious main character.
I remember that I died a lot, my plane would smash into mountains or I would get eaten by a crocodile, and each such instance brought an unprecedented pull of emotion I had henceforth never experienced from reading a book.
In my childhood home, The Phelan Orphanage of St. Dolores, the nuns kept two large bookcases, six by six by two feet deep, stocked with around one hundred books. These books ranged, as I grew up with three siblings . . . Uh . . . I mean orphans, . . . And it was always pleasurable (as orphanage life can get a tad morass) to sprawl onto a cozy couch, be warmed by the rays of sunlight wandering through the blinds, and simply disengage reality and submerge my consciousness into an alternate reality. I read many books that upon recollection simply offer me only the warm fuzzy feeling that pronounces itself so well with the cool nostalgia of those orphanage days. I brought all of the books with me to my adopted family (Which, ironically, was my biological family . . . ). The books in my house, growing up, were regarded as a distraction from too much television. I would love to convey the mass importance my parents placed on reading towards me, though, as I feel that giving your child a book to read to distract them from television is a poor motivation indeed. Truly, my parents asked me what types of books I enjoyed and supplied me with them, understanding the relevance of my early reading prowess as directly connected to my academic achievements.
The last book I read with true enjoyment was . . . Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. I enjoy books that allow for emotional involvement between the folds. I loved the grim fantasy of the piece, and imagined myself hovering over someone’s window beckoning to let me inside to feast on their innards. Truth be told, I was scared, but only a little bit. While I respect Stephen King for the literature he produces I never feel totally satisfied with his endings. But I appreciate and respect such horror books the way I appreciate and respect a well crafted machine, that is, I find machines functional and wondrous, but upon analysis of how it works one can create one’s own machine, and following this logic, I feel that, as a writer, I am searching out literary stimuli that will invoke certain emotional responses from a reader to add to my dazzling repertoire of literary devices.