"The Achievement of Desire" and "Para Teresa" - Response

Richard Rodriguez, author of "The Achievement of Desire", and Ines Hernandez-Avila, author of "Para Teresa", had very different attitudes towards school and family when they were children.  They both did very well and succeeded in school, but they were motivated in different ways.

Rodriguez separated his home life and his school life at a very young age.  He was inspired, at first, by his older siblings who were good students to do well in school, but then he became obsessed, in a way, with becoming smarter.  He was a very eager and anxious student, and once he realized that his parents could not help him with his homework and that he found himself correcting their grammar from time to time, he became ashamed of them.  He started to completely ignore his family at home and would spend all of his time reading books.  He was inspired by his teachers to constantly strive to be better and he was inspired by his parents' lack of education to strive to be smarter.  What he eventually realized though was that he had lost his sense of family and his sense of culture.  School changed him.  Years later, after going to school in London, he decided to return home to his family to be with them.

Hernandez-Avila worked very hard in school, and was made fun of and questioned by her Chicana peers as to why she tried so hard to be a good student.  Her peers asked her why she thought she was so great and if her goal was to be a teacher's pet, but she simply stated that she did "nothing for the teachers" (208), she did it for her family.  She was motivated by her desire to prove to her school that she was not inferior, but equal.  She wanted to work hard to represent her parents and grand-parents who worked so hard and supported everything she did.  However, she understood the viewpoint of her Chicana peers who were against the system because she knew they were scared and grew up thinking they must not conform to the 'others'. 

Both Rodriguez and Hernandez-Avila felt cultural tensions between their lives at home and at school.  The difference is that Rodriguez became so involved in his schooling, that he separated himself from his family and lost the sense of culture he had before he started school and Hernandez-Avila worked just as hard so that she could represent her culture and her family.  The same amount of work led them in very different directions because of their personal motivators.