Cultural Assimilation In Richard Rodriguez's Hunger Of Memory

Hunger of Memory

So many things have said about the cultural assimilation, and so many people have struggled to live the new society to prove themselves and work hard to absorb the new life by learning the language and new culture. So many people devoted their lives to assimilate to be part of American society. Cultural assimilation does not only means to survive in the new life, but also people who try to fit in the new society. A society where people are not judged by their class, money, or education, but are determined by race, color, religion, and where they come from. Do we really and profoundly feel what it means to be part of new society? Do we keep following the stereotypes that we have created in our very own minds, which is, if we speak the same language with same exact dialect, and we share common interests from the new culture, we lose our own cultural roots or background? To make a long story short, what is cultural assimilation means? One of the brilliant examples from personal experience is revealing a particular point of view on the matter of the outstanding work of Richard Rodriguez “Hunger of Memory”. Rodriguez shows cultural assimilation in his personal examples, and displays the issue completely by talking about himself as a Mexican-American who tried to survive a new way of life to become something of himself. In this book, Rodriguez tries to idealize not only his way of life when he assimilates, but he includes his feeling of being alienated from his own culture, his background, society, and his family. He believes that his existence in American society made him understand what it is to be a Mexican American, and what it is to be a minority f...

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...he principal moral of this culture, because they choose to achieve success and they are interested only in the result. Second, the real understanding of “cultural assimilation” is What Rodriguez true believes about the effort and the sacrifice that the minority try to do and lead to be blended or be assimilated into the surrounding culture. There is no doubt that when you adopt a culture as part of our own we become a part of it. Add to the previous line, people need to start understanding that being assimilated should have the dignity and forget about inequality and differences between people, which include skin color, religion, race, and nationality. For this reason, , we have to be aware in teaching our children the value of our culture and the equality between people. In addition, now more than before, I am fearless to say where I am from or what my religion is.