Richard Rodriguez - Father Quotes

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The prospect of a generation of American children being raised by women in homes without fathers is challenging for religious institutions whose central conception of deity is father, whose central conception of church is family, whose only conception of family is heterosexual.

Richard Rodriguez
Somehow the inclination to write about my private life in public is related to the ability to do so. It is not enough to say that my mother and father do not want to write their autobiographies. It needs also to be said that they are unable to write to a public reader. They lack the skill. Though both of them can write in Spanish and English, they write in a hesitant manner. Their syntax is uncertain. Their vocabulary limited. The man who sits in his chair so many hours, and the woman at the ironing board—'keeping busy because I don't want to get old'—will never be able to believe that any description of their personal lives could be understood by a stranger far from home.

Richard Rodriguez
Mexico was most powerfully my father's smile and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment.

Richard Rodriguez
Of all the institutions in their lives, only the Catholic Church has seemed aware of the fact that my mother and father are thinkers—persons aware of the experience of their lives. Other institutions—the nation's political parties, the industries of mass entertainment and communications, the companies that employed them—have all treated my parents with condescension.

Richard Rodriguez
In grammar school—and as new to American history as to the American tongue—I nevertheless puzzled through several junior biographies of Franklin because young Ben's ambition magnified my own. I kept lists in those years of the books I read. I recognized the yearning to escape the limits of family— a strong inclination for the sea —as well as some more vertical yearning: a boy becomes a man by gaining wisdom; each book a rung therefore; each rung a classical tag. I weighed the shame of the sordid candle shop where Franklin was forced to work for his father against the optimism of old New England.

Richard Rodriguez
My father died of neither hot nor cold. My father was as leathern as a saint. He required no trees. As unrefreshed as a Muslim courtyard. He required no fountain. No music. Whenever he saw a baby he said poor baby. His questions were the basic questions, as prosaic as footsteps. What is heaven like? Will I be young? Will I be with Mama? Will I go to sleep? (I don't know, Papa; how can I know?) Absurdly, I gave answers.

Richard Rodriguez
'Why?' My mother's question hangs in the still air of memory. The loneliness I have felt many mornings, however, has not made me forget that I am engaged in a highly public activity. I sit here in silence writing this small volume of words, and it seems to me the most public thing I ever have done. My mother's letter has served to remind me: I am making my personal life public. Probably I will never try to explain my motives to my mother and father. My mother's question will go unanswered to her face.

Richard Rodriguez
At the dawn of a worldwide religious war that Americans prefer to name a war against terror, I feel myself drawn to Islam, drawn to read the Koran, even to kiss the Koran—melodramatically, but sincerely—as I did one evening recently in front of a university audience. I meant to honor Islam. I meant to convey that, as a Christian, I consider myself a loving brother to the Muslim, as I am to the Jew, by the favor of Father Abraham.

Richard Rodriguez
A priest visiting my parish preached a sermon wherein he referred to homosexuality as a lifestyle. By which he meant a choice. So, too, my beloved Father O'Neill (to whom I confessed as a child) said to my sister, a few months before he died, that he disapproved of Richard's lifestyle. Homosexuality requires cubism to illustrate itself, perhaps. But homosexuality is not a lifestyle. Homosexuality is an emotion—a physiological departure from homeostasis

Richard Rodriguez
The reason I threw a rock at Billy Walker's stupid face was I had a crush on him. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession. I threw a rock at Billy Walker's beautiful face. How many times? At what velocity? The priest does not ask if I intended to mar the face. One of the things I love about the church is that motive is assumed: Because I am human. What alone interests the confessor is the form of humanity I wish to confess. Confession is constructed as we are constructed. The confessional box prefigures the American I. I am the sinner, irreducible. My soul is irreducible. Not my red hand.

Richard Rodriguez