In both Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Child by Richard Rodriguez and American Ideology by Howard Zinn, knowledge and its uses are a central theme throughout the texts. In the former, Richard Rodriguez was born in 1944 in San Francisco to Spanish-speaking Mexican American parents. Once Rodriguez begun to attend school, the disadvantages of not knowing English became apparent and Rodriguez’s teachers began to encourage him to learn English. Rodriguez reflected on this time of his life and the aftermath and stated, "Only then did I determine to learn classroom English...taken hold at last was the belief, the calming assurance, that I belonged in public," (Rodriguez, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Child). Once Rodriguez was able to speak English,
