Hunger of Memory

"I felt that I had shattered the intimate bond that had once held my family close. This original sin against my family told whenever anyone addressed me in Spanish and I responded, confounded. But even during those years of guilt, I was coming to sense certain consoling truths about language and intimacy." This author makes a clear distinguishable point of telling you just how important his language that he had and shared with his family was. It made me very disturbed when I read about the nuns, and how they with no thought asked the family to stop speaking their language, the thing that made them and identified them, to just get rid of it all together. As you read you start to understand just how much this language meant the the writer. It was his personal bond that he shared with his family that was taken away from him.
"Intimacy is not created by a particular language; it is created by intimates." The writer tells how he began to speak publically rather than intimatly with the English he had learned. This makes me think about the way in which I speak to others, and how I take for granted the bonding that it brings us together with. This character had that in an even more special sense, because he was using a language in an environment that was totally different. It makes me think about if my family and I were to move to a spanish speaking place, and were forced to speak their language. While I would probably look at this as a great opportunity to learn a new language, I could see how I would also feel a loss of a bond between my family members and I. We would not have that special sense of comfort to be able to just talk amongst one another in a natural way.
"Supporters of bilingual education thus want it both ways. They propose a bilingual schooling as a way of helping students acquire the skills of the classroom crucial for public success. But they likewise insist that bilingual instruction will give students a sense of their identity apart from the public." This was the main point that the author was trying to make throughout the article, that it is important for bilingual speakers to be able to keep their main language as much a part of their life as their new one. Thier original language is their identity, it is what makes them and what defines their interactions with others around them. From reading this article, you can see just how negativly it effected the character to have something so much a part of him taken away, and how we as a nation need to make sure we are able to keep these identities whole, and not tear them apart.