Rodriguez, Richard. Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father. New York: Penguin USA Inc., 1992.

I just finished an incredibly interesting book about Mexico and America for my Minority Voices class. Here are some quotes from it.

Mexico's Children

"My parents left Mexico in the twenties: she as a girl with her family; he as a young man, alone. To tell different stories. Two Mexicos. At some celebration--we went to so many when I was a boy--a man in the crowd filled his lungs with American air to crow over all, �VIVA MEXICO! Everyone cheered. My parents cheered. The band played louder. Why VIVA MEXICO? The country that had betrayed them? The country that had forced them to live elsewhere?" (53)

"In Mexico, one is most oneself in private... In America, one is most oneself in public." (54)

"The culture of t� is guarded by the son, desired by the son, enforced by the son. Femininity is defined by the son as motherhood. Only a culture so cruel to the wife could sustain such a sentimental regard for mamacita. By contrast, much license is appropriated by the Mexican male. If the brother is taught to hover--he is guarding his sister's virginity--the adolescent male is otherwise, elsewhere, schooled in seduction. For the male as for the female, sexuality is expressed as parenthood. The male, by definition, is father. The husband is always a a son." (56)

"It is not coincidental that American feminists have borrowed the Spanish word macho to name their American antithesis. But in English, the macho is publicly playful, boorish, counterdomestic. American macho is drag--the false type for the male--as Mae West is the false type for the female. Machismo in Mexican Spanish is more akin to the Latin gravitas. The male is serious. The male provides. The Mexican male never abandons those who depend on them. The male remembers." (56)

"A true mother, Mexico would not distinguish among her children. Her protective arm extended not only to the Mexican nationals working in the United States, but to the larger number of Mexican Americans as well. Mexico was not interested in passports; Mexico was interested in blood. No matter how far away you moved, you were still related to her." (57)

"Mexican Americans forfeit the public experience of America because we fear it...America lay north of usted, beyond even formal direct address. America was in the realm of los norteamericanos--They. We didn't have an adequate name for you. In private, you were the gringo. The ethnic albino. The goyim. The ghost. You were not us. In public we also said 'Anglo'--an arcane usage of the nineteenth century--you-who-speak-English. If we withdrew from directly addressing you, you became ellos--They." (63-64)

"Chicanos wanted more and less than they actually said. On the one hand, Chicanos were intent upon bringing American (as a way of bringing history) to some Act of Contrition. On the other hand, Chicanos sought pride, a restoration of face in America. And America might provide the symbolic solution to a Mexican dilemma: if one could learn public English while yet retaining family Spanish, usted might be reunited with t�, the future might be reconciled with the past." (66)

"Do not pretend to understand me. I am but a figure of speech to you--a Mexican American." (75)

"You are now in the United States of America. You are a boy from a Mexican village. You have come into the country on your knees with your head down. You are a man." (78)

In Athens Once

"The point of the United States is distinguishing yourself from the crowd. The point of Mexico is the crowd." (81)

"In the last advertised census, the Mexican government entered Tijuana's population as three-quarters of a million. Mexico City might have chosen to bid modestly as a way of dissuading attention from the sell along its northern border. What intrigues us is that we cannot know. There is an unaccountable poblaci�n flotante. How can one number fluid shadows passing back and forth over the border, shadows whose business it is to elude any count?" (81)

"In San Diego people speak of 'the border' as meaning a clean break, the end of us, the beginning of them. In Mexican Spanish, the legality takes on distance, even pathos, as la frontera, meaning something less fixed, something more akin to the American 'frontier.'" (84)

"Traditionally, Mexicans eat at about the time Americans get ready for bed. Mexicans move as naturally and comfortably in the dark as cats or wolves or owls do... America distrusts Mexican shading. The genius of American culture and its integrity come from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. Up and at 'em. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, plain style. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no. Americans take short shrift from sorrow, reassuring one another that tomorrow is another day or time heals all wounds or things will look better in the morning." (87, 88)

Asians

"Children are fed and grow tall. They love Christmas. They laugh at cartoons. They go off to school with children from Vietnam, from Burbank, from Hong Kong. They get into fights. They come home and they say dirty words. Aw, Ma, they say. Gimme a break, they say. The mother says she does not want American children. It is the thing about Los Angeles she fears, the season of adolescence, of Huck Finn and Daisy Miller. Foolish mother. She should have thought of that before she came. She will live to see that American takes its meaning from adolescence. She will have American children." (161)

"This nation was formed from a fear of the crowd. Those early Puritans trusted only the solitary life. Puritans advised fences. Build a fence around all you hold dear and respect other fences. Protestantism taught Americans to believe that America does not exist--not as a culture, not as a shared experience, not as a communal reality... Lacking any plural sense of ourselves, how shall we describe Americanization, except as loss? The son of Italian immigrant parents is no longer Italian. America is the country where one stops being Italian or Chinese or German. And yet notice the testimony of thousands of bellhops in thousands of hotel lobbies around the world: Americans exist. There is a recognizable type--the accent, of course; the insecure tip; the ready smile; the impatience; the confidence of an atomic bomb informing every gesture. When far from home, Americans easily recognize one another in a crowd. It is only when we return home, when we live and work next to one another, that Americans choose to believe anew in the fact of our separateness." (163, 164)

"Immigrant parents send their children to school (simply, they think) to acquire the skills to 'survive' in America. But the child returns home as America. Foolish immigrant parents." (173)

There is so much more that Rodriguez covers. I drew in the words. Coming from the very white rural Northwest, this is all new to me. I am so glad I took this course. I need to have my eyes opened. America is not all white.

Rodriguez also wrote a book called Brown. The little summary in the back of the book I just finished says, "At the core of the book is an assessment of the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America, and the way that they are coloring an American identity that traditionally ahs chosen to describe itself as black and white." That's where I got my title for this entry. I know about the blacks. I know about the whites. College seems an appropriate time to learn about the browns.

Speaking of which, interesting webpage I found: www.thebrowntimes.com.

-Stephanie

P.S. Sorry about the accents not showing up. The words are "VIVA", "tu", and "poblacion flotante."

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