I am reading Richard Rodriguez right now. I have just finished "Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriquez" (Dial: 1982) which I have finished and currently reading "Brown: The Last Discovery of America" (Viking:2002). Rodriquez writes extensively about his identity and his world in "Hunger of Memory" and this theme continues to some extent in "Brown". Because the discussion of it was so pervasive and haunting in his first book, it made me think how identity affects my own writing and how it plays a part in my own reading and life.
Rodriguez admits that his editor recommended that he write more about his family life and less about his racial identity because as the editor put it in 20 years the differences in race will no longer be part of the American landscape. The author rejects this advice and writes about where
he is in his life now. As a reader, I am glad he has chose to do so. I have been a fan of this author for some time and want to know what he is thinking and feeling when he is writing his books. He feels strongly that he is Brown but rejects the label minority and disadvantaged. I don't agree with this author on many issues including affirmative action, but I can appreciate his talent and enjoy his writings.Years earlier, I used to limit my reading to authors that I agreed with. I have found I missed many authors whose books were superior and well worth investigating. I remember looking for
some titles by Knut Pedersen Hamsun who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. A friend of mine said I should not read him because he was a Nazi sympathizer. Or another person said that I should stop reading John Maxwell Coetzee because he was a traitor to his country, Union of South Africa because he relocated to Australia. That all seemed so silly to me. I will continue to
read Coetzee and Hamsun's books are being re-issued. Some people want to know the color of an author's skin before they read him or her or if the author is a man or a woman.In Rodriguez's "Hunger", the author states that when he was in school, he just gave back to his teachers what he was taught and read. It was later he became a thinker. I find that is true about myself as well. What about the parts that we as writers have that are our identity? Rodriguez objects to be classified as an Hispanic Gay Writer. I don't think him as such myself. Whenever I hear him or read him, he makes me think in a humane way about myself and about my neighbors. I think about injustices and I think about inner anger.
There are times when I write that I am not a woman, not a Californian, not an American, not
someone born in the middle of the 20th century but can those facts be separated from me as I write? Probably not. Can I forget where I grew up, the family I was born in and was raised in. I often wished I could. Can I forget the friends I knew and have since died? If I removed all those memories from my life, I would be like an empty room, a nothing and not a very interesting writer.I remember as a kid that I wanted to be someone else. It was only one time. I wanted to give up all that I was and become this bright, well-loved little blond girl who lived in the White House named Caroline Kennedy. I thought she must be the luckiest girl in
all of the world. Her supposedly lucky life stopped looking so lucky soon after I wished her life to be mine. We all have sorrow in our life, rich or poor, loved or unloved, married or unmarried, healthy or ill: it makes no little difference. I am who I am.One of the things that drew me to Richard Rodriquez was his sadness. I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice; but I never felt he felt sorry for himself. He took all that life has offered to him and made it work and I love reading how it works in his life.
For some reason, I thought I needed to hide, to suffocate who I was in my writing, in my life to be fair and unbiased. I have no idea where I got that from. When I read a novel, I don't want to
hear the author's voice, only the characters'. It is different when reading non-fiction. Then I want to hear the author's voice as he looks at the world and tells me, the reader, what he or she is experiencing and feeling. If not, I might as well wait for robots to write books.I know this college professor who is male who says all of the time that women don't think they feel. If he wasn't a relative, I would turn him off. He is wrong. Human beings feel and think. It is part of being balanced and writers are part of that equation. That is also one of the things I enjoy most about such writers as Rodriquez. He feels and thinks and is not ashamed to admit it. The prism that we use is our identity.
A wise man said that everything changes. Writers change and readers don't like that. Identity
change and what one author may say or write in one book may change in the next. I like to think as a reader I can give that kind of leeway to the authors that I read. I would want that kind of freedom. As a writer, we must be willing to change our identity too. We can't lock ourselves into a stereotype for when it is fixed it is just that, a stereotype. Change is part of the identity of the writer and of the reader. Readers change too.I feel a shift in my identity as I write now. I am changing as I write, read, think, experience, relate to others. I seem to be going in another direction and it is good that I am not pigeon-holed into something as a writer. I know one writer who is known as a gay mystery writer and is frustrated she cannot find another genre. Rita Mae Brown switched and it can be done, but it is
hard. I always thought that J.K. Rowling would have to change her pen name to write a different series of books other than young adult fantasy. Other authors have done just that.The problem is when the individual writer stops himself or herself from changing because one formula worked and something new might not. I don't think Rodriguez is stopping himself from changing because he has done so much that others have told him not to do. There is a sense of honesty in his work that shows. What I have learned from reading Rodriguez is that it is alright to be oneself in spite of opposition of others, to take an opposing point of view is alright as long as it is yours. To be honest with oneself is what really counts when living with oneself. There is also a fear of change that can be in ourselves too. That is another reason I love reading Rodriguez because he is not afraid to stand alone.
I started with this subject thinking that I needed to shy away from over identifying from certain things about myself. I brought in Richard Rodriguez because I liked the way he did not refrain from being who he wanted to be even if people called him names and sometimes those people were from his own community. He seems to realize that he is in a tough place and instead of hiding from it, meets it head on and meets it unflinchingly.
I used to have this dream over and over again as a small child. I dreamed that I had a monster
under my bed and I would get so mad that this monster would lurk there without my permission that I would reach underneath it to hit at it. Each time, it would grab me and drag me under the bed and I would wake up sweating and afraid; but I would still try and hit it or grab it each single time. I may not like where I am at or who I am at times, but it is still who I am. I like that even if that monster still grabs me and drags me under the bed.
