The
Reeducation of Richard Rodríguez and Oscar Zeta Acosta
With
musical canon and dialectical process as my models I will attempt to
synthesize strains in The
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodríguez and
The
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. My
thesis is that standing at opposite ends ot the Chicano literary
periphery, thesis and antithesis as in dialectic - point and
counterpoint as in canon, they together are the fondation whereby the
center holds.
Mr.
Rodríguez espouses an openly assimilationist posture. He seeks full
‘Americanization’. He develops the thesis that it is a disservice
to children speaking the ‘private’ language of their family not
to be taught the ‘public’ language of the republic. On the other
hand Mr. Acosta uses his literary work to express grievance and rage
against the United States government as in the references to FDR and
the incident where the protagonist of Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo
spits on the stars and stripes. Furthermore the spitting incident
takes place in the context of the triumphalist totalitarianism of the
second world war. In the context of the civil unrest of the sixties
Mr. Rodríguez is lukewarm in his opposition to the Vietnam conflict.
At the end of Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo
Mr. Acosta wants to break asunder the bonds cast for him by Uncle Sam
and forge ahead establishing a new and independent Chicano identity.
A
contrapuntal progression can be artificed of the structural
antagonisms between the opus
duo.
Just as I have chosen the canon of music, serene and abstract, over
the dialectic of philosophy, discursive and polemical, so too Mr.
Rodríguez and Mr. Acosta have at my view superimposed over their
respective works their own respective superstructures.
The
model superimposed by Mr. Rodriguez, that of the man of the west, the
individual prevailing against the opposing currents of sloth and
superstition is just the model whose authenticity and sincerity is
questioned by the Marxist literary criticism of Lauro Flores. Mr.
Flores points out the irony whereby Mr. Rodríguez sets himself up as
a socially disadvantaged child, only for us to find later that he
never was quite, in his view, socially disadvantaged. States Lauro
Flores:
On a first level it could
be argued that this device is perhaps intended to operate as a play
on irony, inasmuch as we subsequently find out that he never really
was underprivileged.1
Still
I am critical of Mr. Flores and do not find many of his
crypto-socialist arguments compelling, all the while noting the irony
that Mr. Flores seeks to structure the domain that Mr. Rodríguez
defends as his private realm. There is heartfelt irony in the work
of Mr. Rodríguez as in the plaintive realization ala Thomas Wolfe
that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ and yet in the final chapter Mr.
Rodríguez returns to the private intimacy of his family without the
rancor that characterized the homecoming of Mr. Wolfe. Much of the
book is more reminiscent of Mr. Wolfe’s Look
Homeward, Angel
in its yearning for the literary development of the protagonists’
life lived. Mr. Rodríguez does in fact have the basic human right to
place himself on what many Chicanos consider the assimilationist and
bourgeois extreme of the periphery.
In
his own way Mr. Acosta can be said to have staked a claim on his
sector of the periphery. However the journey of Mr. Acosta is inverse
to that of Mr. Rodríguez. Until the very end the Brown Buffalo does
not despair that ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ - and here there is
irony when one considers how many times throughout the course of the
book the protagonist has indeed left home. Leaving anew ever to
embark on what Francisco R. Alvarez has described as the ‘Bios:
la doble jornada étnico-existencialista de Oscar.
The loss of cultural
identity is accentuated by and also reflected in the motive forces
behind the impotence (although this one may read as a criticism of a
universe of hispanos that have often presented protagonists of
exaggerated virility)2
Translation is mine.
The
impotence of Acosta’s protagonist is seen as a symbol of Like the
work of Mr. Rodríguez so too Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo
has been found to be rife with ironies great and small. Jeanne
Thwaites has enumerated these for the curious literary investigator.
For example:
When a writer pretends to
be ignorant of something the readers know, it is dramatic irony, a
device used in stage plays: the audience knows what the actors do
not. The reader wants him to be happy - is glad he is happy - but
knows all cannot go well. Acosta is severely addicted to drugs and
alcohol, has ulcers and both vomits and passes blood.3
As
Thwaites has pointed out obscured by the Chicano triumphalism when
Mr. Acosta’s protagonist dedicates himself to the brown berets is
the drug and alcohol addiction, among other health problems, lurking
about casting its specter over the dreams of our hero. This is
deadly irony.
Reflection
on experience rather than relation of facts seem to be the operative
principles of Hunger
of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodríguez and
Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo.
“...the central problem
of autobiography is that the author relates experiences and not
facts. 4
Translation is mine.
As
Alvarez states after quoting Paul Jay on “ the ever present
ontological gap between the self who is writing and the
self-reflexive protagonist of the work” (Being in the Text 29)
which cannot help but remind one of Mr. Rodríguez’s reflections
concerning the pseudo public distance he felt from his one words as
they passed before his eyes at the typewriter (Hunger
of Memory, 182).
In
conclusion we note the comparative conclusion of Lauro Flores
concerning Ernesto Galarza’s Barrio
Boy and
Richard Rodríguez’s Hunger
of Memory.
As we have seen in the
previous pages, Ernesto Galarza and Richard Rodríguez elaborate
self-portraits that convey two opposed manners of perceiving the self
in its relation with the human group to which they belong. In a
broader sense, the contrast between these two distinct perceptions
encapsulate the ideological contradiction which lies at the heart of
the dialectics of Chicano culture.5
It
would seem that one could in the comparative spirit make this
conclusion regarding Hunger
of Memory
and Autobiography
of a Brown Buffalo.
1
Flores, Lauro, Chicano Autobiography: Culture, Ideology and the
Self, The Americas Review: A review of Hispanic Literature &
Art, vol. 18, no. 2, 1990, page 86
2 Alvarez, Francisco R., The
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo de Oscar Zeta Acosta:Escritura, Ser
e Ideología en la autobiografía Chicano de los 70, Monographic
Review/Revista Monográfica, vol. 9, 1993,
page 167.
3 Thwaites, Jeanne, The Use of
Irony in Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, The
Americas Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp 80-81
4 Alvarez, Francisco R., The
Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo de Oscar Zeta Acosta:Escritura, Ser
e Ideología en la autobiografía chicano de los 70, Monographic
Review/Revista Monográfica, vol. 9, 1993, page 164.
5 Flores,
Lauro, Chicano Autobiography: Culture, Ideology and the Self, The
Americas Review: A review of Hispanic Literature & Art.
vol. 18, no. 2, 1990, page 89
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