Richard Rodriguez

Language is a social event.

— Richard Rodriguez

“Human unhappiness is evidence of our immortality.”

— Richard Rodriguez

But one does not forget by trying to forget. One only remembers.

— Richard Rodriguez

“The impersonality of the written word made it the easiest means of exchange...”

— Richard Rodriguez

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.

— Richard Rodriguez

There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers.

— Richard Rodriguez

Learning can cause social fracture. Your people start expressing themselves.

— Richard Rodriguez

Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico's great federalist and apologist, has coined a wonderful term, la raza cósmica, "the cosmic race," a new people having…

— Richard Rodriguez

When a society doesn't know what to do with its young, it's in real trouble. When the young don't know what to…

— Richard Rodriguez

My grandmother would always tell me that I was hers, that I was Mexican. That was her role. It was not my…

— Richard Rodriguez

So many of my friends tell me they’re not religious. I’m like, Of course you’re religious. You watch Oprah Winfrey, don’t you?

— Richard Rodriguez

Now we have this idea that, not only do you go to first grade to learn your family's language, but you go…

— Richard Rodriguez

A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me…

— Richard Rodriguez

“This is what matters to me: the story of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer from college to discover bewildering…

— Richard Rodriguez

You don't know Mexico, man. You have trivialized Mexico. You are a fool about Mexico if you think that Mexico is five…

— Richard Rodriguez

Though I am alive now, I do not believe an old man's pessimism is nessessarily truer than a young man's optimism simply…

— Richard Rodriguez

But lots of emerging racial tensions in California have nothing to do with whites: Filipinos and Samoans are fighting it out in…

— Richard Rodriguez

The difference between being Mexican and being Chinese, as I can see it, is that when you go to Harvard from a…

— Richard Rodriguez

Bilingual-education advocates say it's important to teach a child in his or her family's language. I say you can't use family language…

— Richard Rodriguez

I don't think writers should be convenient examples. I don't think we should make people feel settled. I don't try to be…

— Richard Rodriguez

I had all this anxiety about what it meant to be a minority. My professors - the same men who taught me…

— Richard Rodriguez

The Indians had to be either killed, or herded into reservations, which were essentially concentration camps, and forgotten. Their history had to…

— Richard Rodriguez

The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the…

— Richard Rodriguez

“By the waters of baptism, the active European was entirely absorbed within the contemplation of the Indian. The faith that Europe imposed…

— Richard Rodriguez

Cultures, when they meet, influence one another, whether people like it or not. But Americans don't have any way of describing this…

— Richard Rodriguez

When the Irish nun said to me, "Speak your name loud and clear so that all the boys and girls can hear…

— Richard Rodriguez

For me, diversity is not a value. Diversity is what you find in Northern Ireland. Diversity is Beirut. Diversity is brother killing…

— Richard Rodriguez

“To many persons around him, he appears too much the academic. There may be some things about him that recall his beginnings—his…

— Richard Rodriguez

Suddenly the land is haunted by all these dead Indians. There is this new fascination with the Southwest, with places like Santa…

— Richard Rodriguez

In some ways I consider myself more Chinese, because I live in San Francisco, which is becoming a predominantly Asian city. I…

— Richard Rodriguez

“Most, I loved James Baldwin's essays. There was to a Baldwin essay a metropolitan elegance I envied, a refusal of the livid.…

— Richard Rodriguez

My decision was sparked by affirmative action. There was a point in my life when affirmative action would have meant something to…

— Richard Rodriguez

Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in…

— Richard Rodriguez

I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our…

— Richard Rodriguez

Of course, since we don't see the Indian as a living figure - having turned the Indian into a kind of mascot…

— Richard Rodriguez

It is very curious that the United States and Canada both assume that diversity means only race and ethnicity. They never assume…

— Richard Rodriguez

“The conversation advanced with remarkable ease. Talk is cheerful, the way talk is among people who rarely see one another and are…

— Richard Rodriguez

I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create…

— Richard Rodriguez

The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection…

— Richard Rodriguez

Mexico was most powerfully my father's smile and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment.

— Richard Rodriguez