Transformation

America is ever changing. Over the centuries it has transformed in many ways. There has been an increase in immigrants, especially Hispanics, which has caused a transformation of both language and culture. Richard Rodriguez in his book Brown: The Last Discovery of America, and in other essays has brought his views on these matters and presents brown as a new way of describing America. Brown as color; as impurity; as language; as America.

Richard Rodriguez is a writer who is artistic, and has an idealistic way of recounting things. In his essay “Late Victorians” he writes how a woman jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He describes it as “…before she stepped onto the sky. To land like a spilled purse at my feet,” (Encounters, 496) He compares the woman hitting the ground as a “spilled purse.” When you think of a spilled purse you don’t think of tragedy, so his comparing this insignificant incident of a purse hitting the ground to the death of a woman catches you off guard. Rodriquez says it in such a tranquil manner that the tragedy seems to be unrealistic. He again shows romanticism somewhere else in the essay:

On a Sunday in summer, ten years ago, I was walking home from the Latin mass at Saint Patrick’s, the old Irish parish downtown, when I saw thousands of people on Market Street. It was San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day parade-not marching backs. There were floats. Banners blocked single lives thematically into a processional mass, not unlike the consortiums of the blessed in Renaissance painting, each saint cherishing the apparatus of his martyrdom. (493)

Rodriguez’s comparing the parade with religious allusions makes it more glorious. He compares the parade of floats and banners to a “processional mass.” He satirically portrays gays as saints just as he is coming from church, which considers homosexuality as a sin. He is basically beautifying the parade. He romanticizes to capture your attention and to bring you into his world. He wants you to see things as he sees them. He wants to “defy anyone who…say[s] what is appropriate to my voice” (Brown, xi).

Rodriguez, in his essay “Peter’s Avocado,” expresses “[b] rown as impurity,” (Brown, 194). This brown is not brown as color but as something “mixed, confused, lumped, impure, unpasteurized, as motives are mixed…”(“Peter’s Avocado”, 197). However, brown can be “the cement between the leaves of paradox” (Preface, xi). Brown is complex and can be many things at once. Rodriguez adds many metaphors comparing brown to “tarnished past…as refreshing as green…as old Roman gardens or pennies in a fountain…gurgled root beer, tobacco, monkey fur, catarrh,” (“The Brown Study”, 35). As Rodriguez says brown is impure, he keeps bringing up impurity and says how “impurit [ies] are fresh and wonderful to me,” and he “extol[s] impurity” (202, xi). He states how “impurities are motives, weights, considerations, [and] temptations,” (“Peter’s Avocado”, 202). Given that he has a keenness for impurities and complexities, you can infer he of course loves brown, which is to him both impure and multifaceted.

Rodriguez focuses on brown as a mixture of races, and it’s role in America. He says in the preface how he is a “brown man” and how he has “brown thoughts,” (xi). He continues to say how brown isn’t a “singular color, not a strict recipe,” but a mixture of colors (xi). By colors he means races and nationalities. So in other words a brown person comes from a mixture of nationalities, and cultures. So when he says “America is browning” he saying it’s a mixing together of all the people that live here (xii). “The future is brown, is my thesis” (“In the Brown Study”, 35). This fusion of cultures is creating a new America. To Rodriguez, brown is the end to the constant wandering of individuals and to a drawing together of all in America. He “celebrate[s]” at the browning of America (xiii).

Rodriguez writes about what it is to be Hispanic in America and how Hispanic is a “brown assertion,” (“Hispanic,” 110). To get his points across he uniquely writes his thoughts in disconnected allusions and stories on brown, race, America, education, as well as family, and each time he returns to them they gain new significance and enrich the complexity of the whole idea on America and Hispanics. In his essay “Hispanic” he believes that in America, the term “Hispanic has encouraged the Americanization of millions of Hispanics. But at the same time, Hispanic has encouraged the Latinization of non-Hispanics,” (105). This assimilation of the numerous Hispanics in America creates a transformation of the cultures of both Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Rodriguez subsequently goes deeper into the American language and discus’s the argument of using the term Hispanic or Latino. Through the