Richard Rodriguez, who has written powerfully about race, class and ethnicity in three largely autobiographical books, will speak in Ketchum on Thursday, January 17, as part of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts Lecture Series.
His talk will focus on “the browning of America,” a phrase he uses in his third book, Brown: The Last Discovery of America, to describe the increased cultural, ethnic and racial mixing in America—although he claims that such mixing is nothing new and was, in fact, present from the first moment Europeans, Africans and Native Americans met on New World some five hundred years ago.
Calling himself a "queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation," Rodriguez uses his own life as one example of what it means to be “brown.” Or as he optimistically elaborates: “I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten.”
Rodriguez’s first book, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), was an account of his journey to become a fully assimilated American. The book was both highly praised and highly controversial because of Rodriguez’s stand against bilingual education and affirmative action. Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992), continued to explore the dilemmas of ethnicity and cultural identity and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Brown, a collection of essays, was nominated for the 2002 National Book Award.
A contributing editor at New America Media in San Francisco, Rodriguez holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford and a master’s degree from Columbia. In 1997 he received a George Foster Peabody Award for his PBS NewsHour essays on American life. His other awards include the Frankel Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the International Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council of California.
The lecture will be held at the Presbyterian Church of the Big Wood and starts at 6:30 pm. Tickets are available at www.sunvalleycenter.org for $25 members / $35 nonmembers / $10 students. Tickets can also be purchased by phone at 208.726.9491 ex 10 or stop by The Center in Ketchum.
Rodriguez’s talk is given in conjunction with The Center’s current multidisciplinary project Crossing Cultures: Ethnicity in Contemporary America. Attendees to the lecture are encouraged to visit the Crossing Cultures visual arts exhibition at The Center, Ketchum, through February 23. Admission to the exhibition is free.
The lecture is sponsored in part by Paul G. Allen Foundation, with support from Robin Leavitt & Terry Friedlander.
