Hunger of Memory

Part III. Interpreting Evidence.

Explain the meaning of each of the following quotes.

Section I.

1. “Like others who know the pain of public alienation, we transformed the knowledge of our public separateness and made it consoling – the reminder of intimacy.”

Section II.

2. “That day, I moved very far from the disadvantaged child I had been only days earlier.”

3. “His children grew so accustomed to his silence that, years later, they would speak routinely of his silence… But my father was not shy, I realized…”

Section III.

4. “So any translation would have seemed wrong; her words would have been stripped of an essential meaning.”

Section IV.

5. “Just as Spanish would have been a dangerous language for me to have used at the start of my education, so black English would be a dangerous language to use in the schooling of teenagers for whom it reinforces feeling of public separateness.”

Part IV. Extension.

Much of Rodriguez’s first chapter concerns the feelings associated with his bilingualism. Write a paragraph (minimum: 10 lines; maximum: 15 lines) that relates your own experiences with bilingualism to Rodriguez’s.