November 1 — The Hispanic Immigrant in American Culture
Richard Rodriguez, son of Mexican immigrant parents and one of the nation’s most important essayists, frequently writes about the intersection of his personal life with some of the important issues of our time, such as the role of Hispanics in American culture. As we continue to build a wall to stem the flow of illegal immigration and to protect the borders, what has been the impact on the large number of legal immigrants, Hispanic and otherwise? Has it changed the lives of immigrants in the U.S.? How has it affected those who wish to immigrate to the U.S. and to those who are already here? How has this affected the U.S. as a whole?
When: Saturday, November 01, 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM
Where: University of Indianapolis, Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, Ruth Lilly Performance Hall 1400 E. Hanna Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46227
A Spirit and Place event. A Q&A with the audience will be followed by a reception and book signing. Admission is free. Presented by University of Indianapolis Kellogg Writers Series, Big Car Gallery, El Puente Project, Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, La Plaza, and The Second Story. Questions? Call 317-788-3373 or e-mail eweber@unindy.edu.
From Rodriguez’s S&P bio:
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, one of America’s most important essayists and a master of the “personal essay,” writes about the intersection of his personal life with some of the great vexing issues of America.
Rodriguez, the son of Mexican immigrant parents, grew up in Sacramento, California. He was an undergraduate at Stanford University. He went on to spend two years in a religious studies program at Columbia. He then studied English Renaissance literature at the Warburg Institute in London and was a doctoral candidate at the University of California in Berkeley.
In 1982, he published an intellectual autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Widely celebrated and criticized, this book is today read in many American high schools and colleges. A memoir of a “scholarship boy”, Hunger remains controversial for its skepticism regarding bilingual education and affirmative action.
In 1992, Rodriguez published Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, a “philosophical travel book,” concerned with the moral landscape separating “Protestant America” and “Catholic Mexico.” Days of Obligation was a runner-up for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction in 1993.
In 2002, Rodriguez has published Brown: The Last Discovery of America. In a series of essays concerned with topics as varied as the cleaning of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cubism, and Broadway musicals, Rodriguez undermines America’s black and white notion of race and proposes the color brown for understanding the future (and past) of the Americas. As a journalist, Richard Rodriguez worked for over two decades for the Pacific News Service in San Francisco; he has also been a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and the Sunday “Opinion” section of the Los Angeles Times.
Many Americans probably recognize him from his television appearances on PBS. For more than ten years he has appeared as an essayist on “The News Hour with Jim Lehrer”. His televised essays on American life were honored in 1997 with a George Peabody Award.
In 1993, Richard Rodriguez was given the Frankel Medal (now renamed “The National Humanities Medal”), the highest honor the federal government gives to recognize work done in the humanities.
Why does Provocate think you should attend this event?
His ethnicity and relative privilege, his perceived conservative politics and sexual orientation … all add up to a very counter-intuitive view on issues of immigration and culture. This will be an important discussion to continue after Rodriguez has completed his Spirit & Place duties.
If you think this sounds interesting, be sure to check out …
You’ll want to hear Rodriguez’s Spirit & Place public conversation November 2. Just as importantly, attend the other events addressing Latinos and immigration in Central Indiana this fall. We welcome public intellectuals of the stature of Richard Rodriguez to Indy, but we don’t need ringers to have innovative conversations.
Know before you go:
Read some of Rodriguez’s essays from Salon for a flavor of his writing.
And for your listening pleasure …
In an interview, as he sought a metaphor for the mixing of cultures in the US, he turned from food to music:
I’m not sure that food is exactly the point. It seems to me that when I look around what I hear is music. The most popular form of music right now among Latinos is largely a brown stew, but not with clumps, but with melded tunes. Reggaeton, which is Jamaican dance hall, salsa, hip hop – that’s what the kids are listening to – and it seems to me that that appetite for more than one’s self is very much brought into the lens right now. And literally so, where fusion on the plate has become the new “American recipe.” It seems to me that stew doesn’t get at the complexity of the Vietnamese/Mexican restaurant. Beef stew is not exactly the recipe there. It something much more daring, as these spices meet on the tongue.
Good analogy. Here’s an example of reggaeton Jamaica and Ethiopia, Mexico and Puerto Rico, the United States … all making each other more interesting.
