James Baldwin’s Visions Of America and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory

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James Baldwin’s Visions Of America and Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory

Many immigrant and minority narratives concentrate their efforts on the positive side of the American dream. These particular stories narrate a person's struggle and rise through the ranks of the Am6rican hierarchy focusing on the opportunities that seem to abound in this country. While these stories are well and good. they do seem to soft peddle the flip side of this country's attitude toward the immigrant and minority. America is a land of milk and honey and opportunity, but unfortunately most new officiates or unwilling participants in the American culture face an American nightmare that leaves its effects on the individuals, families and cultures for generations to come. America has its own deeply seated prejudices and stereotypes of people from outside its walI5 and these prejudices force some immigrants and minorities either to abandon former cultural ties in order to assimilate or to strap on the baldric of equality that changes their lives forever.

Two authors, in particular, will help explore this idea that an immigrant or minority experiencing the trauma of bigotry must in some way attempt to reconcile their own cultural heritage with the demands of a new society that objects to their very cultural difference. James Baldwin and Richard Rodriguez experienced this type of immigrant and minority angst regarding their own ties to their cultural and racial backgrounds. Baldwin struggled with the desire to be a writer, not just a black writer, amidst the chaos and protests of the 1960's political movement and Richard Rodriguez battled between the pull of assimilation and the success it promised and his own feelings of familial betrayal...

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...d, for their very words echo the sounds of their communities' cries for equal and peaceful co-existence. However, as both Baldwin and Rodriguez recognize and proclaim there will always be a need for their type of experiences because it is only through the loss of their cultural identity that they realized the precious gift it is.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. "No Name In The Street". Visions Of America. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. Persea 116oks: New York, 1993. 284-290.

Harris, Trudier. New Essays On Go Tell It On The Mountain. Ed. Trudier Harris. Cambridge UP: New York, 1996. 1-28.

Leeming, David. James Baldwin: A Biography . Alfred A. Knopf. New York, 1994.

Porter, Horace. Stealing The Fire. Weslayan UP: Middletown, 1989.

Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An Autobiographv. Bantam: New York, 1983.

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