Hunger Of Memory Summary

After interviewing a close friend of mine, and listening to the interviews from my peers in class, I am deeply overwhelmed. This is because their case is very similar to Richard Rodriguez’s reading, Hunger of Memory, the Education of Richard Rodriguez. Rodriguez talked about assimilating into the American culture, and adopting English as his first language. He described how his family stopped speaking Spanish to him, and continuously promotes English language in the house. Initially, I see no harm in learning a new set of language, or trying to fit into another culture. Nonetheless, I was too naïve as I learned from Rodriguez’s story that a lost of language is detrimental to one’s identity. To be honest, I was baffled by the interview of my own friend, and was surprised that he felt the same shame of losing his origin language, Mandarin. Moreover, after listening to my peers’ interviews in class, it turned out that one of them have very similar case to both my interviewee and …show more content…
My friend is born and raised in a strong catholic family. He said that the religion has played a big role in his life, as God becomes his purpose in life. His greatest influence of adopting the religion is his family and he felt proud to be called a catholic. His second identity is perseverance, which is influenced by his father’s perseverance in work. He was told and trained since young to not give up on anything especially his education. The third identity that he associates himself with is honesty. He explained that Indonesia is developing country, and corruption is still common. One can bribe a government official and get away with the wrongs they committed. As a catholic that grows up in a corrupted community, his eyes were wide opened and deeply troubled by people who were dishonest. His greatest influence of pursuing honesty comes from his family as well, who would scold him whenever he