Days of Obligation

By -
Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father, by Richard Rodriguez

This title caught my eye at work when I was finding a different work by the same author for somebody.  I appear to be the first person to check it out since it was acquired...in 1993.  It took me a while to figure out that it's actually a collection of essays (which is what I get for not reading the acknowledgements), so it's a bit choppy, but all the essays are centered on the differences and influences and questions of identity between Mexico and California.  I probably didn't understand half of it.

I gather that Rodriguez was kind of an unusual writer in the 90s and people weren't always happy with him.  He is an American born of Mexican parents and grew up in Sacramento (his descriptions of Sac sure sounded familiar).  There are a lot of musings on how California and Mexico bleed into each other, and the influence of Catholicism versus Protestantism: "...I have told my friends that I was writing a book about California and Mexico.  That was not saying enough.  I've been writing a book about comedy and tragedy.  In my mind, in my life, Mexico plays the tragic part; California plays the role of America's wild child.  Or was I writing a book about competing theologies?"

 
I coincidentally wound up reading 3 Spanish-themed books at once, which is really pretty odd for me.  Having grown up in Southern California, I tend to think of anything Spanish as boring next-door stuff--famous California authors too.  I could happily live the rest of my life without ever visiting another mission (naturally, my NorCal daughter thinks they're fascinating and begs to go, and I do enjoy them more as an adult.  Still, I maintain that one of the great joys of homeschooling is that I don't have to build a mission in 4th grade unless I actually want to).  I like to study far-away languages and literature, and often ignore the good things right here at home. 

Comments

  1. FaithSeptember 24, 2012 at 3:06 AM

    This book actually sounds very exotic to this east coast girl!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanSeptember 24, 2012 at 7:37 AM

    Yep--it's all about location! Which is why I shouldn't assume Steinbeck is boring just because he's local. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more