While this post is not specifically about women or women's issues, its worth noting that tonight was the first event in the 2009 - 2010 Lenoir-Rhyne University's Visiting Writers Series.
Tonight we were given the privilege to hear Richard Rodriguez, an American journalist, essayist and author. For decades Mr. Rodriguez has shared with us his many observances and experiences as the son of Mexican immigrants in San Francisco. With a lot of humor and transparency this evening, he shared with us his thoughts on race and immigration, and his insights into the reasons for our country's seeming difficulty with our heritage as an immigrant nation.
I have listened to Mr. Rodriguez for years on NPR and PBS. I have always been particularly taken with his ability to get under a subject to its heart, whether talking about race and immigration or other issues of the day.
I appreciate his remarks about the importance of non-fiction. I am a big fan of non-fiction writing and agree with him that non-fiction does not get enough attention. It is through non-fiction that we can get a deeper explanation of events. To imagine what can be, I think it is important to know what is and what has been. Authors like Mr. Rodriguez give us not only a glimpse into events from our history, but an insight into their past and present meaning. He has given us a body of work that is so intensely personal and honest, showing us intimately what it means to be a first generation American, bridging the world of his parents to his world as an assimilated Mexican American.
I have provided links here to some places on the web where you can read Mr. Rodriguez's essays and hear him interviewed. Do a search for him and you will find an abundance of biographical information and many interviews and essays to keep you reading for a long time.
His books include: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez; Mexico’s Children; Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father, and Brown: The Last Discovery of America.
I am so grateful to Mr. Rodriguez for all of the time he has taken to share with us the depth of connection we have to our not so distant neighbors to the south, our American brothers and sisters. And I am also grateful to Lenoir-Rhyne University for bringing authors such as Mr. Rodriguez to us, with his unique perspective into what it means to be an American. His work is even more prescient today as we struggle with what kind of a society to be.
Posted by Kate Tinnan, WRC volunteer
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