Private And Public Identity Essay Example

Private identity is related to a person's identities where he/she cannot describe feeling publicly or has difficulties in expressing their ideas and thoughts and have a difficult time socializing with others who are somewhat different by race, language or any factor. It is like being introverted in front of the public. And public identity is related to somewhat expressing one's feeling flawlessly in front of the public. There are many factors for a person to be publicly introverted that includes different languages, different cultures, even different ethnicities. Hunger Of Memory written by Richard Rodriguez reflects his development from a disadvantaged son of Mexican immigrants living in northern California into a well-educated intellect, an author and lecturer. Rodriguez strongly believes that for accessing the privileges of public life for example voting. Ones must learn how to assimilate into public society depressing their private identity which is only limited to his own ethnicity or a couple of society. He argues that cultivating a public identity is directly related to maturing into adulthood. While he doesn’t argue for complete demolition of private identity.  

Rodriguez states how he started his school life knowing only 50 words and becoming a publicly recognized professor and author. He talks about how his public identity aided him to claim his rightful place in public society. He argues that everyone deserves to speak in a public voice and feel belonging in a public society. But in order to gain this one should make sacrifices to the expectations of society. This includes loss of private identity, as a person starts spending more time to act and speak in public, he starts to live a life with reduced intimacy. Rodriguez accepts these facts because he remembers the feeling of closeness to his family as he was a child and how it started fading when he started living a public life. He disapproves of the system of bilingual education and argues that school is supposed to be a place to build a child’s public identity rather than cultivating his private identity he already has formed at his home and his community. He believes that the purpose of education is to develop a child's ability to speak in a public language (English) which is a crucial step in child's development and the system of bilingual education would defeat this purpose leading children to deny for participating in public life.  

He states how his new identity created a mess in his private life as he had fewer words to speak with his parents. After he excel in English, he was stuck in between English and Spanish. His family members would tease him a pocho which is a Mexican American who has forgotten his origin roots and religion because he couldn’t speak in Spanish flawlessly. And how his parents feel pressure explaining why their son can't speak Spanish fluently. It made Rodriguez arise a sense of guilt and betrayal to his family by learning English but later he realized that intimacy was not created by language but rather it was being created by personal connections. He says that learning English wasn’t a linguistic but a social change. He writes: “Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes.”