We spent the entire week talking about AIDS in my essay film class and the first piece we read was Richard Rodriguez's essay Late Victorians in The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
. This essay deals with AIDS, San Francisco, and the gay community. I'm not going to talk about that essay here though, because you can't read it online, but I highly advise all of you to read it in the anthology if you get the chance.
Instead I'm going to talk about a short essay he wrote called Speaking American. This appeared on PBS Newshour in June 1998. California had just voted to end bilingual education in an effort to make Spanish speaking children in particular learn English. In the essay Rodriguez explores the meaning of our language and argues that we do not, in fact, speak English. We speak American-- a language comprised of all the immigrants who have landed here. We use German words, Spanish words, Yiddish words. We use it all. And he argues for a pride in this language, a pride in the fact that a language such as this can exist.
I love Rodriguez's writing style. It's very simple, yet powerful. I had never read anything by him until this week and I was instantly hooked by his essay, Late Victorians, because it so clearly outlined a place. It reminded me of Joan Didion's writing in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but then entirely different. What I love about both writers is that they tackle the present in such a way that they encapsulate a generation. Rodriguez writes from a completely different time and perspective than Didion, but I love him for a lot of the same reasons. Speaking American is very short, and you can read it at PBS.
If you want to read more about my obsession with Joan Didion you can read the Awesome Essays post I did on her.
I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.