Summary Of The Achievement Of Desire By Richard Rodriguez

In a country like America where people all over the world come to obtain a better future for themselves and their children there is a large diversity with culture and languages. Most immigrant families comes to American speaking a different language and have to adapt to the American language, English. However some people don’t learn English or have difficulty learning it. Usually older people have difficulty learning English or just don’t have time, on the other hand children are sent to school where they are taught English. In this situation children now have to learn a new language and keep their native language. Richard Rodriguez wrote an article titled “The Achievement of Desire” where he spoke about the difficulties he faced at

When Rodriguez began to speak more and more English he began to shift away from his family and his native language by “losing all trace of a Spanish accent” (Rodriguez p.1) Rodriguez being more involved in school made his family view him as an outsider and began to see him as “the family’s joke” when he would rather spend his time reading than doing other things like chores at the house (Rodriguez p.1). He also found it better to stay at school than be at home when he would bring an assignment from school and found it to be too noisy at home to even study (Rodriguez p.2). When his mom realized Rodriguez’s deep interest in English she told him “you should keep up with your Spanish” meaning he was losing his native language and losing his family’s culture (Rodriguez p.3). However his father told him that education would “enable a person to escape from a life of mere labor” (Rodriguez p.5). His parents’ different view of education was a disconcerting, but he followed his dreams and went to college. Even him going to college brought up disagreements because his mom thought it was unnecessary for him to go a college that wasn’t close to home, a college that would be too expensive for them (Rodriguez p.5). After a while his mom no longer brought it up, and Rodriguez went to college, this made him distance himself from his family even more. When Rodriguez went back home to

When Reyna arrived to the US she couldn’t wait to begin school, however it was not what she expected since she didn’t speak English. When Reyna arrived to class the first day she was frightened, and when she spoke Spanish her teacher shrugged and smiled and told her “No entender mucho” meaning that the teacher didn’t understand Reyna or what she was going through (Grande p.171). This made Rayna feel anxious, as would have anyone in her situation, and to make matters worse the teacher “pointed to a table in the corner” making the ESL students feel more excluded than what they already were (Grande p.171). Mago, Rayna’s older sister also experienced troubles because she didn’t speak English, she liked a boy but “he didn’t notice her because she was an ESL student” (Grande p.208). A time when language became a barrier for Reyna’s success was when the teacher didn’t read her work to consider her for a competition because it was in Spanish. Reyna felt that it was unfair that her work wasn’t evaluated but she didn’t have the English words to say what she thought, so she said nothing at all (Grande