tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post7623808499514138679..comments2024-01-13T23:32:12.331-06:00Comments on Slaves of Academe: Five Favourite Revolutionaries: Richard RodriguezOso Rarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11345231159759787852noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-64177801252393237312017-08-04T22:46:30.873-05:002017-08-04T22:46:30.873-05:00He was racist and a sell out.He was racist and a sell out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-71700978293936747402010-06-12T02:38:03.160-05:002010-06-12T02:38:03.160-05:00I have this one on the Kindle, and it translates w...I have this one on the Kindle, and it translates well. Footnotes, TOC work fine. But most of all, it's the text and the mechanics. This is a classic in the San Francisco community college arena, where English 101 instructors push the text, through anthologies that have included it, or the book itself. He was a bit more frequent on NPR 5 or so years ago, but not as much. As soon as affirmative action comes into play again, they'll call him back. Some say he's too flowery, something characteristic of minority English students. There are two other books that come to mind when I think of pulling this one up: Reality Hunger: A Manifesto and Ilustrado: A Novel. I'll be rereading Hunger of Memory shortly.rolodexterhttp://rolodexter-books.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-11392256788458859942008-05-18T18:06:00.000-05:002008-05-18T18:06:00.000-05:00I remember reading Hunger of Memory when it first ...I remember reading Hunger of Memory when it first came out, and being rather annoyed with it. Later my mother (from an Italian-American working class family who grew up in Greenwich, CT) told me how much she identified with his story, including the shame and ambivalence around assimilation. That really shocked me at first but it explained some things about my mother.<BR/>I read Brown a while back, and don't remember it clearly enough to summarize it, but it struck me at the time as a very smart book.momohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12149328149132703479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-35015517975988675552008-05-16T12:20:00.000-05:002008-05-16T12:20:00.000-05:00Been lurking for a bit and share the general admir...Been lurking for a bit and share the general admiration. Have not read RR and I guess now as a white liberal I can't... :-)<BR/><BR/>Seriously, I wonder how much of the trouble with RR is how he seems to have opted out of strategic essentialism; thereby, of course, revealing it to be optional. He's not helping much with collective leverage, but it's not clear in either an individual or a historical sense why he needs to identify with that collective. Cultures merge and assimilate all the time, often under pressure; that's why there aren't any Scythians or Vandals or Saxons or Normans around.<BR/><BR/>His story invites for me, cheaply perhaps, the question of how much of our misery is 'self' inflicted, thinking of self both narrowly and broadly, and the ways that identity is both enabling and constraining. Like Obama he's testing to see where the box he's stuck in is being defended, and finding out it's mostly on the inside - a barrier desperately maintained and decried.<BR/><BR/>I wonder too about the conflation of education and white supremacy. Of course if education is white this is a problem; especially if we think of ourselves as vessels that get filled up from outside with education, perhaps even displacing previous contents. That's a little too passive and inflexible an image; very much the Freire banking model, which fits only a particular variant of euro-style mass education. <BR/><BR/>But 'white' education at the elite level is actually quite different. Its sin is that it focuses on the organic development of the individual, as if group affiliations were irrelevant. So the supremacy being expressed is not whiteness but individualism. It's not race but deracination that's the poison pill. RR's illness is the modern condition?<BR/><BR/>This is pretty ramshackle. Sorry, and thanks for the opportunity to think out loud.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-21757003303194432082008-05-14T02:45:00.000-05:002008-05-14T02:45:00.000-05:00OK, I now realize (once again) how behind I am in ...OK, I now realize (once again) how behind I am in reading. I've got to read these Rodriguez pieces!!!Professor Zerohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04909063513731044826noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-34614437874212143462008-05-13T23:24:00.000-05:002008-05-13T23:24:00.000-05:00In response to Cero, your student was an astute re...In response to Cero, your student was an astute reader. Regardless of whether RR had come out or not, "Hunger" is packed with moments of intense desire for all types of men -- including workers and his father. The pool scene with his family in one of those essays is enough for a detailed queer reading. The title "Mr. Secrets" is practically a coming out party. <BR/><BR/>Thanks to Oso for the post. I think that RR has been playing everyone who has wanted to racialize him all of these years. The piece "The Prince and I" reveals the brilliance of his performance. It's the ultimate revenge. RR is like a playful cat toying with those who opt for facile race critiques. He is the greatest living essayist working in English now that Susan Sontag has passed. And it's sad -- a part of the tragedy of race in these here United States -- that so many people want to talk about him primarily as a Chicano or a sellout or whatever. And yet, it speaks to his tortured brilliance that he has used that racialization to his advantage. For someone who doesn't think of himself as Chicano (not sure he claims Latino either), he has positioned himself as the most Latino/Hispanic/Chicano of all the writers. Methinks thou dost protest too much, RR. Regardless, "Late Victorians" is the greatest piece since Baldwin's "Notes of a Native Son."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-48516474492589560782008-05-13T15:40:00.000-05:002008-05-13T15:40:00.000-05:00Historical question: when (before he came out) did...Historical question: when (before he came out) did it start to be known that Rodriguez was gay?<BR/><BR/>Why I ask - never having taught him myself (although I am now considering it as a result of reading this post).<BR/><BR/>In around 1990 I had a gay student who was reading Hunger of Memory for an English class. He came to my office hour to talk about it with someone (me) with a Spanish department / Comp Lit / sympathetic to Chicano Studies / staunch supporter of bilingual ed point of view. Neither he nor I had any gossip on Rodriguez the person. This student said: "I am telling you, this guy is gay and that is what this book is really about, although he cannot or does not say so; it is this which motivates the arguments he makes here. Mark my words, he will either come out or be outed in the near to medium term future."<BR/><BR/>My question: in 1990 if we had been in the right circles, would we have known already?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22234799.post-19971593680822134982008-05-11T15:16:00.000-05:002008-05-11T15:16:00.000-05:00Huh -- This was unexpected. I appreciated reading...Huh -- This was unexpected. I appreciated reading your notions, though.GayProfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11289510184782252498noreply@blogger.com