Tyler Garrett February 10th, 2014 English 106 Halliday

Murray & Rodriguez Reading Response In the beginning of Richard Rodriguezs story he feels missed placed. He describes his life as an accident of geographic location because he is a Hispanic child in a room filled with white children. He not only feels left out because he is the only or one of the few Hispanic kids but because most of the kids parents were successful in the medical field or in business. He feels like he is underprivileged since both of his parents are middle classed Mexican immigrants. I can relate to a specific part of his writing on a very personal level. He goes into detail about his familys transition into America and says how smoothly it went. A great deal of the time we identify with how others view us. Murray believes that by writing autobiographies he can search deep into his childhood. He also lived a very different life than Richard so it seems silly to compare them in a sense but at the same time they seem like the perfect candidates. Richard continues to explain that his parents referred to those they worked with, or crowds of white Americans they would interact with, as distant others. These distant others were referred to as los gringos. I have traveled to a Central American country (El Salvador) twice in my lifetime. The moment I started talking with the kids there I had a new name. Gringo was my new name. I learned on the trip that it is technically a racist term but most of those who use the word do not really mean it in a negative connotation. There are only a few select who actually discriminate White Americans in their country. In Richard Rodriguezs case a few of the neighbors would always speak negatively to the recently immigrated family. By saying things such as Keep those

Tyler Garrett February 10th, 2014 English 106 Halliday

brats away from my sidewalk!. Through his so called Americanization process he learns that saying things in his native language is not acceptable even for himself any more. It is too painful of a reminder of the past and the unwanted transformation that occurred between him and his loved ones. This relates to Murray in how the stories he tells sometimes come from not only experience, but added humor from overheard conversations and such. For example he writes, I do not know where that I know comes from. Whatever the case, in Murrays or Rodriguezs, humans go through changes on a regular basis and I think it is important to keep or ethnic and cultural backgrounds with us throughout our life.