Society is a dynamic force rather than static entity.  Within a larger society, smaller ones are continually seeking the balance between their own identity and the adoption of the larger, more dominant society.  Thus, individuals who make this transition experience a series of impacts on their cultural identity, including changes in perception and relationships.

In “Young Girl’s Wish” by Amy Tan and “Aria” by Richard Rodriquez, the main characters ultimately realize that their own acculturation has forever altered their perceptions of home and the people there.

Acculturation is defined as a process of change in one culture which is brought about by its close exposure with another culture.  Alfred Kroeber, one of the foremost anthropologists of the twentieth century, explains this process in King and Wright’s discussion as ultimately resulting in the “asymmetrical absorption of one culture into the other” which is a gradual process of the more dominant culture creating this change in the less dominant culture.

 Both Richard Rodriguez, in his autobiographical piece about bilingual education, and Olivia, the daughter of a Chinese immigrant and an American mother in a story by Amy Tan, realize that their concepts of home and their place in it have been forever changed as a result of their own processes of acculturation.

Both of these characters move from their native homes to live in the United States.  Olivia is born in the United States and lives an Americanized life from the start.  Conversely, Richard moves with his family to California as a young child.  He tells his story of acculturation from the perspective of a grown man, thirty years later, after he is fully aware of how the process has impacted his life.

Rodriguez, particularly, addresses the movement that began in the 1960s and 1970s in which bilinguists attempted to assert that non-English-speaking school children should be taught in their own family’s language and not in English.  Such a rejection promotes either a lack of commitment to establish cultural values and a withdrawal form organized social life (Michener).  Rodriguez’s piece attempts to argue against this type of thinking as limiting to the children.

In the greatest sense, both characters experience cultural estrangement.  According to Catherine Cozzerrelli, a psychologist at the University of Kansas, “cultural estrangement is a form of alienation that reflects the feeling that one does not fit in with mainstream American culture.” Here she is referring to an individual who is American who does not fit in with his own culture.

In the works referenced above, the individuals feel an alienation from their own native cultures.  Olivia feels alienated from her own Chinese culture and even from her half-sister because she has never lived the Chinese culture.  Rodriguez feels alienated from his own family because he has learned to speak English and cannot recall much Spanish because of it.  Basically, cultural estrangement is alienation from society (Michener).

At the onset of their long-awaited journey Kwan’s Chinese home of her youth, Olivia must defer to her sister’s proudly displayed Chinese ‘street-smarts.’ It is Kwan leading her sister and brother-in-law through the streets, bargaining with the vendors and telling the tales of superstition and folklore that are grounded in the culture.

The owl vender recognizes this and immediately speaks to Olivia in English, not Chinese.  Additionally, Olivia worries that the street venders’ food is unsanitary even though many of her native peers eat it daily.   In addition, the group is charged the ‘tourist’ price for pancakes based upon both Olivia and her husband being tourists while the taxi driver attempts to appeal to his American fares by playing the music of an American 80s band (Tan 1272-1273, 1277).

Although she appears to be Chinese on the surface, it is obvious to all that she is American underneath, and she is treated as such by the Chinese individuals that she encounters.

Olivia’s lack of participation in her own cultural heritage is made obvious by her statement “I inhale deeply and imagine that I’m filling my lungs with the very air that inspired my ancestors, whoever they might have been” (Tan 1273).  She is not connected to her ancestors and cannot really be inspired by this experience.

In addition, her cultural connection with her sister is also strained.  Upon hearing that Kwan had wished from the mountaintop, she immediately assumed that she had wished for a handsome husband or a car – both icons of American success.

Because of her American life experiences, Olivia is unable to relate with her own Chinese heritage, and as a result, unable to truly understand her own sister, especially in her time of grief.  Olivia is an American; Kwan is not.  Kwan can still attempt to call China her home and form relationship with the people there, but Olivia’s home is America and cannot identify with the Chinese people.

Rodriguez’s realization of the impact of culture is not related to one isolated event, but rather over a period of many years.  Rodriquez’s purpose is to argue against the bilingual education movement because “doing so,” he says “is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life – a family’s language” (Rodriguez 12).

Rodriguez maintains that his own family language was reserved for the very intimate occasions of family at home.  He describes the attention he paid to the sounds of words, thus the significance of the title, “Aria.” Rodriguez separated, as a boy, the public language of English from the private language of Spanish.  He describes this experience as follows:

“I lived in a world magically compounded of sounds.  I remained a child longer than most; I lingered too long, poised at the edge of language – often frightened  by the sounds of los gringos, delighted by the sounds of Spanish at home.

I shared with my family a language that was startlingly different from that used in the great society around us.  For me there were none of the gradations between public and private society so normal to a maturing child.  Outside the house was  public society; inside the house was private” (Rodriguez 16).

After a period of time, the teachers visited the Rodriguez home and importuned the family to practice English at their house.  Eager to assist their children in education, the parents agreed and thus begins the loss of Richard’s precious distinction between the sounds of home and the sounds of public.

He describes this realization when he encounters his parents, alone in the kitchen, speaking Spanish.  “…at the moment they say me, I heard their voices change to speak English.  Those gringo sounds they uttered startled me.  Pushed me away.  In that moment of trivial misunderstanding and profound insight, I felt my throat twisted by unsounded grief” (Rodriguez 21-22).  Richard acquiesces to this new arrangement and symbolizes his understanding of it by answering out in school, loudly and confidently.

Rodriguez describes his slow process of acculturation, and subsequent cultural estrangement, as “a disabling confusion” (28).  His fluency in English, supported by his parents all the while, creates a faltering in his speaking Spanish.   This created embarrassment for both him and for his parents.  He was stricken with the insult pocho by his own family members and shunned by his own cousins.

As a result, he lives with the guilt of having turned his back on the Spanish language, albeit at the insistence of his own parents.  It is his grandmother that finally teaches him the lesson that resolves his conflict.  Through a conversation with her, in Spanish, he regained the feeling he found, and lost, as a boy, what he calls the “intimate utterance” (Rodriguez 37).

Many times, cultural estrangement can result in a loss of cultural identity.  Clearly Olivia’s cultural estrangement and loss of cultural identity are the products of her living in America her whole life.  It does not appear in the story that Olivia is bothered by her inability to engage in China as a Chinese women.  Her association with her husband and her life in America have made the substance of her identity, and she is not upset or disappointed with that.

On the other hand, Richard Rodriguez does struggle with his identity as a Hispanic-American for years until he is able to understand the impact that culture differences had upon his youth.  In his own words, “This insight unfolded in time.  Making more and more friends outside my house, I began to distinguish intimate voices speaking through English” (31).  He is able to understand, as a grown man,  that intimacy passes through words but are never simply the words themselves.  As a result, his identity as a Hispanic-American is intact.

 Culture exerts tremendous pressures on society and the individuals within.  Both Olivia and Richard feel rejected, isolated, and embarrassed by their own representative cultures as a result of becoming too acculturated into American society.

Today, millions of children who immigrate to other countries experience these same feelings.  While social activists have persistently attempted to allow these children to retain their cultural identity through their language, these stories, especially Rodriguez’s account of his childhood, seem to suggest that individuals are happier when they are allowed to find their own intimacy wherever they seek it.

Rodriguez feels strongly that this is not found merely in words.  As more immigrant children attempt to take the same journey as these characters, hopefully their paths will be easier because of those who have gone before them.

Works Cited

Cozzerrelli, C.  Research Interests.  Kansas State University Department of Psychology.            Accessed November 7, 2006 from http://www.k-state.edu/psych/research_cozzarelli.htm

King G.and Meghan Wright. “Diffusionism and Acculturation.” Anthropological Theories.        Birmingham, Alabama:  University of Alabama, Department of Anthropology, 2001

Michener, et al.  “The Application of Social Psychology.”  Handbook of Social Psychology.

1988.    Available online from http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam/xsoc530/socstructure.htm

Accessed November 7, 2006.

Rodriguez, R. “Aria.”

Tan, A. “Young Girl’s Wish.”