“When I was a boy and refused to speak Spanish (because I spoke English), then could not speak Spanish from awkwardness, then guilt, Mexican relatives criticized my parents for letting me “lose it”—my culture, they said.”

— Richard Rodríguez

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

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Richard Rodríguez 127

American journalist and essayist 1944

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“When I was a boy and refused to speak Spanish (because I spoke English), then could not speak Spanish from awkwardness, then guilt, Mexican relatives criticized my parents for letting me “lose it”—my culture, they said.”

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