Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

by Richard Rodríguez

Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies inthe stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic successwith a painful alienation - from his past, his parents, his culture -- and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle-class America. Provocative in itspositions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boystruggling to become a man. "From the Paperback edition."

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Education, Autobiography, School, Biography Memoir

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Richard Rodríguez is an American writer who became famous as the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodríguez (1982). His work has appeared in Harper's, The American Scholar, the Los Ángeles Times Magazine, and The New Republic. Richard's awards include the Frankel Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the International Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council of California. He has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction; and the National Book Critics' Award.

Reviews

[Portnoy_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please, excuse me for being frank about this, but some of the reviewers missed the main point of the book.

Rodriguez is not writing about himself trying to leave his cultural heritage behind. He is writing about his struggle to keep his heritage, while being assimilated by another culture: The culture of higher (end) education. His struggle is grounded on his (working class) family being so far away from that when he started his journey, and also unintentionally pushing him away by taking from him the most important medium of relation: their language.

At the end of his journey he has come extremly far, and at the same time he must go back to square one. He has broken every educational ceiling there is, but still suffers from his inner disunity. Now that he has reached what his parents had in mind, when moving close to his very first school, he must try to revive his roots. This is extremly difficult, for his parents are (in a sense) still working class.

To round it up: His main struggle is about keeping his cultural heritage, while loosing the social heritage. And he did a pretty fine job in putting it into words.

If you are interested in this topic, I recommend Richard Hoggart's "The Uses of Literacy. Aspects of Working Class Life".

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was attracted to this set of “essays impersonating an autobiography” from 1982 due to the warm, wise, and sensitive persona he projected in his reflections on the human condition in his TV segments on Charles Kuralt’s CBS production “Sunday Morning”. He paints a vivid picture of his emotional and mental development as the child of working class Mexican immigrants in Sacramento. I loved his portrayal of the impact Catholicism had on him in youth, his comfort in the rituals and mystery, inspiration from their high Latin Mass then standard, and serving as an altar boy. He didn’t suffer much from explicit racist incidents, but he internalized significant levels of internal racism from his mother’s linkage of a dark complexion with poverty and manual outdoor labor and his sister’s sense that lighter skin was more attractive. His parents sacrificed a lot for him to get a decent education, but the drive he developed toward success in that realm led to a wedge between him and their culture. They could be proud of him, but for a long time he had lost the ability to be proud of them. The process led him toward some sense of shame over their lack of education and associated sophistication.

I was fascinated with his emerging concept that Spanish spoken at home was for expression of his private and true self, whereas the English spoken in school was for projecting a public persona. At first his steps toward achievement and precocious involved a mercenary pleasing his teachers and parroting their ways and thoughts. Eventually, he learned that the assimilation he was experiencing was a valuable ticket to healthy skills of expressing a private identity in public. This was part of the insight that led him to fame in essays against bilingual education and affirmative action. He was obviously talented or he wouldn’t have been able to excel at Stanford and Berkeley and complete a Fullbright Fellowship on Renaissance literature. But he did come see how unjust it was for him to benefit so much from scholarships and affirmative action as a minority student, when the real source of unequal opportunity lay in poor early education. I can identify with the elements of his story related to being a poor scholarship student under special pressures and guilt from receiving such opportunity and to the sense of alienation in the divorce of the Ivory Tower from one’s roots.

Rodriguez true claim to fame came not from the traditional arena of academic pursuits, but as an essayist with a special knack of elucidating our social reality in American by infusing objective analyses with the personal. My “B” grade for this reflects to diminishing relevance of the topics of bilingual education and affirmative action which figure significantly in this volume. I have collected two of his three other autobiographical collections and due to their different subjects look forward to pursuing them eventually because of his writing skill.

[Samira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok. So I did not enjoy this book, not because it was a terrible book, but because it angered me. I am Americanized and I try my very best to learn as much about my culture as possible. I want to embrace my culture and the fact that there is someone out there who wants to throw theirs away (when they know how to speak their language fluently and know their culture by nature) angers me. Maybe, then, it is a really good book because it got a response from me, because it impacted me, but I still can't help but get angry when I hear the author's name.

[Jessica]

I have taught Rodriguez's essay, "The Third Man" for four semesters at Columbia. Now I am in a class where this book was assigned to me. I mention this because this is a book about the learning process, its prizes and perils.
I can't stop thinking about this book, talking about it. Rodriguez fights for every sentence, every word. You can almost see the 200 revisions that have gone into each phrase, but not quite. This is a beautiful book that accomplishes what I thought to be an impossible task: the autobiographical political manifesto. How many old men out there want to write memoirs cum polemics? All of them, I think. Rodriguez is young in this book, but he took a long time writing it (years).
The most intriguing idea in this book, to me, is RR's assertion that a great education can only be obtained with great sacrifice. By this, he doesn't mean hard work, he means that any time someone from a disadvantaged background obtains a great education, they sacrifice closeness with their family, their community. The price of the education is isolation, even loneliness.
For anyone who is trying to write a book for those who don't read books, for those who can't read, this book is your friend.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 Review
I challenged myself in 2024 to re-read the books that impacted me most in my 20s.
Technically this one only barely squeaks in as a book from my 20s, but it influenced me at age 29 so we'll count it.
For being barely over 200 pages, this book packs a serious punch with its themes on what it means to be a minority, the impact of affirmative action, and the power of education. One of those books where I uncover more with every read.

2023 (Secondary) Review
If you can, read this one in print. Don't listen to it on audio. I've now done both ways in a span of a few months and the audio just misses some of the beauty and care in Rodríguez's words. I don't know how else to explain it because in general I prefer a good audio book. But this one is short and meaningful enough that it is worth the extra care that comes with reading his words in physical form.

2023 Review
I honestly don't know why this book is so polarizing and I think I am done reading reviews in an attempt to figure it out. I loved it. The book is incredibly relevant for today. He isn't just writing about a specific affirmative action policy; he is writing about multiculturalism and the challenges of adapting to a melting pot while also preserving a portion of your original identity.
In particular, I appreciated his analysis of being an academic in a family of nonacademics. He achieved the very thing his family pushed him towards, but in doing so, became a stranger to them.
Rodríguez's view of language, identity, and family will probably stick with me for a while.
For me, this was one of those framework-changing books. It gave me new words to describe familiar emotions.
Though Rodríguez is only a few years younger than my grandpa, this really does feel like engaging with a peer. He was young when he wrote it. He was struggling with all the angst of life. Yet he hits on things that feel quite applicable. Definitely one I want to come back to.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rodriguez is often vilified by academic leftists for his conservative views on bilingual education (against it) and affirmative action (against it). Strangest of all, he wants to go back to the Latin mass. He is a gay, Mexican-American Catholic who got his PhD in Renaissance Literature and then dropped out of the academic circuit because he felt Ivy League schools were courting him due to his ethnicity. Now he makes a living off his books, articles, and boyfriend.

This is more a story of his early years and the mental negotiations of being "a scholarship boy." --Which he continually refers to in ponderous parentheses. Well, being an 8-year scholarship girl, I feel I have to say he is a little bit right and a little bit making excuses for his own conservatism and trying to trace it to a larger dynamic.

His writing is very reserved and serious, making his prose succinct but ultimately a bit dull. Also, in light of today's tell-all memoir culture, it is funny/quaint how he thinks he is doing something huge by revealing his mildly awkward childhood memories about being a child genius with assimilation anxiety. The genre has gotten into much deeper waters in the past 30 years!

I happen to read this between "Vows" and "Fun House" and I was struck by how both those books really put it all out there in a much more engaging way. The best thing I took away from the book was his argument that by design education changes people and we cannot pretend to be the old person we were once we have committed fully to the process of schooling.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty infuriating to read. Rodriguez contradicts himself over and over again and many of his statements are very hypocritical. He argues that elementary education needs reform, yet he knows nothing of the public school system in which the majority of minorities go through in this country. In my opinion, he is completely out of touch with the subject matter he discusses and therefore it makes it hard for me to see any merit in his stances.

[Steven Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is strange and a wonder to stumble on a book that tells your story. A friend recommended Hunger of Memory to me and when I first started reading it, I had to put it down because my skin crawled with the feeling that someone had gotten inside my head and written my thoughts out. The book was published three years before I was born. And yet its pages startle me into recognition like a misplaced mirror. If you want to understand me, this book is a kind of key into my inner world. I don't like everything in it, but then again, I don't like everything in me, either.

Richard Rodriguez's story is so very much my story. He is a Mexican-American man who has mostly lost his Mexican identity and has a weird obsession with English literature. (I know right!? There are two of us!?) Like Rodriguez, I am on a quest to dig deep into cultural treasures that sometimes feel like they are mine to share and sometimes feel like they will always be someone else's. He also mentions the "sin of betrayal" of learning English, and I know that "sin" deeply. Other Latinos have coldly rejected me when they learn that I can't speak Spanish.

But to be more truthful, his story is my father's story and my story rolled into one. What happened more slowly over three generations in our family happened in his life in two. It is a story of growing up poor, of Mexican parents who transplanted their children into white spaces so that they would gain access to education, wealth, power, and success, and the children losing their cultural heritage along the way. This is the American Dream: assimilation, self-determination, success, no matter what the cost.

Like Richard Rodriguez, I am keenly aware of the tremendous strides our family has made in the span of three generations. My grandfather, a migrant worker, became a school janitor so that my father could go to a state college and become an engineer, so that his son could go to an upper class private liberal arts college and go on even further to get a master's degree so that now I can pick at the Bible in Hebrew, Julian in Middle English, Barth in German. And yet, like Richard Rodriguez, my life took a left turn. I have been given so much as a third generation minority: wealth, education, whiteness, but it's not what I long for.

On paper, it's the American Dream in three acts. Rags to riches, or if not riches, at least middle class lattes, minivans, and Amazon Prime. But what was truly gained, and what was lost? This looks and sounds like profound ungratefulness, but it's not. I have been given so much, more than any other generation in human history. My grandparents and parents worked hard, very hard, to give me opportunities. I am deeply grateful. But it's a recognition that the gifts are not the Giver and to settle for the gifts in themselves is idolatry. Remember that we have a deeper hunger.

Richard Rodriguez's politics are scrambled, like mine. By critiquing liberal orthodoxies, he is despised by other minorities. But by exposing the utter meaninglessness of the American Dream, he cannot sit easily with white conservatives, either. He calls himself "a comic victim of two cultures," and something in me says "Yes, that's me. I, too, am a shapeshifting tragicomic."

Rodriguez has written other books where he delves deeper into religious questions, so I'm not going to speak for him on that, but it is at this juncture of double estrangement that the Gospel comes alive for me. Jesus, for me, is the only solution to estrangement. Jesus is the one who made the promises of God come true on the cross, promises of peace, reconciliation, and a home. It is Jesus who is at work in me to reach out, beyond my own shame and guilt and alienation, to truly love and even know others. It is Jesus who is at work in me to reach out in both directions – toward brown and white, toward Republican and Democrat, toward Pharisee and tax collector – in search of community, in search of a home, together.

There are many reasons why I am drawn to Augustine, but one of the biggest is that he was, like me, a person of mixed ethnicity who further lost his already vanishing ethnic identity when he went and got educated. As Justo González points out in his book The Mestizo Augustine, Augustine was both North African and Latin, both conquered and conquerer, a mestizo. This double estrangement – not quite North African, not fully Latin – is familiar to me. And yet it was this same double estrangement that gifted him the unique vantage point from which to write the City of God. His double estrangement opened him up to see that in scripture, Israel and the Church are a pilgrim people, estranged from the world on their way to their heavenly home. His double estrangement gave him the necessary distance to see Rome for what it was, "a second Babylon," as he called it. I imagine some of the old Pagan aristocracy and not a few proud Roman Christians were very upset when he wrote that. But most importantly, it was in his double estrangement that he experienced the reconciling grace of God, a grace that satisfied his deepest hungers and opened him up to share the feast of God with other living, breathing, broken and beautiful human beings.

Mexican heritage, the American Dream, mestizaje, these are all good gifts of creation. And yet, when worshipped they become what the Hebrew Bible calls hevel: vanity, evanescence. The beautiful paradox of the Gospel is that it is only when we empty ourselves of everything else but Jesus, everything but the cross of Christ, that we can receive the world back, even our cultures and identities, a hundredfold, resurrected, transfigured.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book some will love and others will hate.
I first read this book for a college course and found Mr. Rodriguez a bit of a complainer. I just finished re-reading and discovered I greatly enjoyed his writing style and was better able to understand his experience growing up Mexican-American in California. I am still a bit ambivilant It is, at times, a riviting personal narrative. about the interaction between language, culture and assimilation. Mr. Rodriguez poignantly communicates his sadness about his inability speak his native language with his dying grandmother or his parents. He takes a stand on issues of education that may go against what is expected of a Mexican-American, nor is he apologetic on his stand. In his later book of essays, wirtten almost a decade later, "Days of Obligation" his view of total assimilation is somewhat broken.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Language, multiculturalism, academia, personal identity, family. He is very observant, has a skilled writing voice, and isn't afraid to be piercingly honest.

This memoir covers topics like life as a non-native English speaker, experiences in academia as an immigrant and minority, and thoughts on bilingual education and affirmative action. Particularly I was struck by his descriptions of identity as an academic and reader in an unschooled family, a kind of loneliness that exists alongside close family ties, a dissatisfaction and frustration with those whom you love.

Basically, everything Amy said in her review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Briana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been trying to figure out some of the deep anger and hate this book receives. In fact I read the reviews before I even read the book. (Randomly found it at half price books and it seemed interesting enough) I am glad I don’t let reviews sway my reading choices. This was a profound book for me. Something that I deeply resonate with and did not expect to. Being full Hispanic (half Mexican half Argentinian) it was really beautiful to see parts of myself portrayed in this collection of essays that I had never seen or read before and perhaps never even really figured out or put into words before. Sadly, I think a lot of people did not grasp what Richard was trying to say. I think also a lot of people forget it is a personal essay and speaking from his own point of view and understandings. But either way, I understood completely what it means to be separated by your parents culture by language and education. It was oftentimes heartbreaking to read because it was so similar to my own experience. Also the bits about Catholicism was really great to read and understand about myself. Truly so much of it was eye opening and I think it would do a lot of people good to read it. Also the last part !!! 😭😭 idk why that made me so sad, probably because it was too close to home. He nails the public private life part. Bravo Richard. Idc what any1 says, this was a well written work of art.

[Gloria · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book over Christmas break and it ruined my holiday! It's the memoirs of a lost man who seeks to justify the distance he feels from his family through his transformation by assimilation into a well to do American author. He sees the loss he has experienced as worth the price. The edition I have is recommended by conservative George Will need I say more to my liberal friends as to why I can not stand this book?

I will say more. It haunts me. I see him as the child I knew who wanted to be white. He saw his ethnicity as a disadvantage (rightly so). Rodriquez makes the childhood mistake of equating educated with being white. He and his family agree by the urging of the nuns who educated him to lose his Spanish. Speak only English at home.

He is a lonely soul who I pity. The price of his success was too great and utterly unnecessary. His story only stokes my anger against the bigoted who yell speak English to the immigrant, who fear the changing demographics of America and who are hurting our immigrant students in US schools when we do not encourage them to keep their language but only push English on them. These fools think losing a language makes a person better. With Rodriguez I rest my case that it does not.

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

I met Mr. Rodriguez once after hearing him speak. Years later, I decided to read his memoir/autobiographical sojourn. I had mixed feelings as I read his memoirs because he seemed troubled, angry and befuddled by his confusion over his lack of connectivity with his culture and family. I feel he never truly came to grips with who he was and the impact of getting a first class education. Sometimes, he comes across ashamed and other times he seems boastful. Throughout his book, I get the impression he is a reluctant penitent. Maybe, it is me but I found his book confusing and frustrating. For an educated man, he does not communicate clearly.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike Richard Rodriguez I'm not a Mexican-American, but I did grow up in a Spanish-speaking household since my mother is Puerto Rican. Of all the books about and by Hispanics I've read before or since, this is the one I most identified with, that really resonated and spoke to me. I could see much about my family reflected in his--attitudes towards education, skin color, religion... This book indeed was assigned reading in a Sociology class, because it does fit into that discipline. But it's also known for Rodriguez' positions within it on Affirmative Action and Bilingual Education--which I agreed with--particularly after reading this. He talks about what he lost with the intimacy built by speaking Spanish, yes--but that to function in America what he needed was a public language--which in this country means English first and foremost. And that to gain that public voice and move into the mainstream of American society such a sacrifice is crucial and necessary. It's also a moving, powerful, and beautifully written biography.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book. I mean I liked it because it was well-written but overall, it was just ok. I thought at first he was delving into the transformation of immigrants until I was able to discuss this book with people of his ethnic background. They were angry with him. I was curious to find out why.

It did change my view of the book but not by much. It still was a well written memoir. He still sounds like a douchebag when reflecting back on his family and the cultural stigmas he has had to face throughout his career.

I hope one day someone might write a rebuttal memoir to this memoir so I can read about the life of someone who didn't grow up to be someone with his head stuck up his ass trying to find the meaning of life through color.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

What did you think? Goodreads asks. Indeed this book gave me a lot to think about. Although it was written over 30 years ago, he brought up some points that are still in contention. As in many nonfiction books, Mr. Rodriguez has the tendency to re-state his case repeatedly in various permutations.

The main points that I distilled from it are that Affirmative Action is bad because it tends to give people who aren't really disadvantaged unnecessary advantage. He seems to forget that prior to affirmative action, during times of quotas, the quota for many minority groups was 0. It was irrelevant if the person applying was economically disadvantaged or not. That said, Rodriguez makes a good point when he says that more attention should be paid to economic disadvantage and to improving the elementary and high schools in poor neighborhoods so that students from such schools will be capable of going to college.

As in many programs, a good concept can be unsuccessful if inadequately funded. Rodriguez confuses the concept of Affirmative Action with the way such programs were carried out on a lot of college campuses. Coming to college with inadequate foundations, he saw many such students fail for lack of enough academic support. He has a point that that should have been provided.

Throughout the book, Rodriguez seems to be conflicted about his identity as a Mexican from a working-class family. Although all his siblings were academically and financially successful, none of them seemed to share his pain about moving up in the class struggle and thus, farther away from their working class parents. Indeed, at the time that he wrote this book,Rodriguez seems to be struggling with many personal issues. That was over 30 years ago. I hope that he's resolved them by now. At any rate, it was an interesting read.

[Carol Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written more than thirty years ago, in the early Eighties. It's the life story of an educated Mexican American who became an Ivy League college professor. All over the country there are people like Richard Rodriguez, teachers, doctors, lawyers, even Supreme Court justices. (Oh, and let's not forget Diana Gabaldon, romance author, visionary and innovator, a double-bacon genius burger whose roots are in Mexico even if her books are all set in Scotland!)

Yet even today, in 2016, when you turn on the TV the "Mexican" character is usually someone like Tuco or Crazy Eight on BREAKING BAD. More than thirty years after this book was written, Mexican = "bad guy" = "gang banger" = "dope dealer."

Not all Mexican men are ruthless, fast-talking gangsters, stone cold killers with golden teeth and gang tattoos and big shiny cars that bounce up and down. Some Mexican men are timid, self-effacing, gay academics who just want to blend in to the scenery and disappear. That's why this is an important book, even if it's slow and sad and boring, and really not much fun to read.

[Araceli Sanchez · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I decided to pick this book to read I was in my early 20's. The first chapters I felt I could somehow relate to the struggle in trying to assimilate to the mainstream culture. However, as I continue reading I was disappointed when I read further. I got the feeling that he was ashamed of his roots and felt that he was someone who is phony and he was not able to fit in with his family because of the education he had attain at UCLA. I am Mexican American and also attended college. When I was a student I never felt I had to assimilate to the mainstream culture and forget from where I came from. I am proud to be bi-cultural and do not have to pretend to be someone I am not. My family have taught me well.

[Lucero Nava · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has honestly become a sort of diary to me. Every single concept that Rodriguez writes about I can relate too. Many are surprised to see me so "into" a book of such topic. As a Mexican-american teenager, I can confidently say that this book is a true eye opener.
I enjoy seeing the openness with which Rodriguez speaks about his life, his beliefs, and his struggles. The amount of possible meanings for each topic extend over a wide range, I enjoy the juxtaposition of him as a person. He is awkwardly, some may say, placed in a world where he doesn't belong. I disagree, this book is proof that he has earned his position. It describes in detail his success and his failure. I recommend this book and can truthfully say that I will be rereading it often, if not on end.

[Yessica Salinas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I did understand where he was going, and in a sense understand the indifference being bilingual does. I feel he couldn't see the broader picture of his life. He actually came from a much better background, attended a private school, went to universities and overall a great life. so for him to write his life as a tragedy and unfair upbringing, was very much incorrect. self insecurities played a major role in his perspective. but definitely a hard read, and even harder to relate to.

[grllopez ~ with freedom and books · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really pleasant conversation about major social topics. My review here: Hunger of Memory

[Crystal Belle · Rating 1 out of 5]

in many ways i felt as if he was ashamed of his mexican heritage. he seems to uphold assimilation and westernization of thought, mind, etc. for that reason, i am not a fan.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, artful essays that I profoundly disagreed with. Rodriguez has the incredible skill of portraying himself as the victim of most situations, oh woe is him. So much talk about privilege and class, and so little reflections on those...

3/5.

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“There are things so personal they can only be revealed to strangers.” For years I had condemned this book to the ‘conservative’ wing of American essays, but finally reading it, I’m pleasantly surprised. Decades ago Rodriguez a “comic victim of two cultures” gained some notoriety for opposing bilingual ed and affirmative action when to suggest so was heresy among liberals. Fine, but these essays are intriguing, intelligent and somber, unlike today’s mean-spirited and mindless right. This is a story of a Mexican-American child who excels at reading, writing and, by his adulthood, alienating his simple parents. This is the author coming to be a public individual (English), so much so that he violates both his parents’ privacy (Spanish) and the collective needs of immigrants—i.e. heritage and Affirmative Action, but does so for interesting reasons that are worth disagreeing with. “Credo” is an excellent, assignable sketch of the different cultures of American Catholicism in the early 60s.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory is about the certain benefits and inevitable costs of getting higher education and the solitary life of a writer. His self-portraiture applies a rather austere and bleak and spartan writing style and voice and evokes an autobiographical speaker's convinced and convicted sense of melancholy, loss, loneliness, and lamentation. As a reader, I was kept away from getting too close for comfort and thus remained at an emotional and intellectual distance. Of course, it could just be me. It could be me. Hunger and Memory, be mine.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The son of immigrant parents who speak only Spanish grows up to become a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California and then a published author with a national following. Julio Pino? Well, yes, but also Richard Rodriguez whose memoir nicely tails with those of us who had to teach our parents the ways of the USA while searching for our own identity. That identity proved to be flexible, fluid, and resilient from Reagan to Trump. Catholic school, graduate school, the first taste of sexuality---it's all here as the immigrant experience in America continues to repeat itself.

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's impossible for a book like this to not have a political slant, but it's really not written as such. It feel's like Rodriguez is talking about his personal experience, and he's not trying to say that everyone in his position has the exact same feelings.

[grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

screw this guy and his book

[James Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Rodriguez is a man whose education bifurcated his life into a private life and a public life. In the public sphere he was driven to obtain an education that has led him to become one of the most interesting essayists of our time. His description of his inner life, especially his reading life is one of many exceptional aspects of this book. His liberation from the private sphere into the public, where he has become a literary light for others, was made possible in part by this reading life; a life driven by a compulsion to become part of the "public sphere" that was centered in the culture apart from his family. This was a part of his life that I personally identified with and believe that many individuals who love the reading life will also.

In this memoir he explores his own coming-of-age in an America that challenged him to understand what it is to be a Mexican American and what it is to be a Catholic in America. At the heart of the memoir is Rodríguez’s recognition that his is a position of alienation, a position that he accepts with resignation and regret. As the title of this collection of autobiographical pieces suggests, he remembers his early childhood with nostalgia, while acknowledging that his coming-of-age has resulted in his displacement from that simple, secure life.

Another center for his autobiography is language and the importance of it in his life. He did not speak English until he started to go to school and even then it was difficult for him to learn the language for it was not spoken at home. One exciting moment in his education occurred when three nuns from his grade school visited his home and encouraged his parents to support their children's English language skills. Although they were indifferent speakers of English, his parents from that point forward asked their children, Richard and his brother and sisters, to speak English each evening. Richard, through this practice and his own diligence in reading and writing, would go on to major in English in college eventually doing postgraduate work in Renaissance Studies.

He shares the hard work that all this entailed and his critical reaction to the growth of bi-lingual education. His courage in developing and maintaining an independent voice for his beliefs in this regard also help to make his story unique. In his view bilingual education prevents children from learning the public language that will be their passport to success in the public world, and he uses his own experience—being a bilingual child who was educated without bilingual education as it was introduced into the American school system in the 1960’s—as an example.

Rodríguez offers himself as another example in criticizing affirmative action programs. Turning down offers to teach at various post secondary educational institutions that he believed wanted to hire him simply because he was Latino, Rodríguez began what has been his persistent criticism of affirmative action policies in America. His uncompromising position in this matter led him to leave academia and pursue his writing skills as a journalist and essayist. His devotion to education in language and life helped him develop the voice that he shares in his journalistic and readable prose style.

I first encountered his voice while watching the News Hour on PBS where he was an essayist for many years. The style he demonstrated there is present on every page of his autobiography. I would highly recommend this for anyone interested in the development of a humane intellectual.

[Jeremiah Lorrig · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is rare that I read something and feel that the author is expressing something that I have personally felt.

This work’s reflection on growing up and finding your place in a world that you don’t seem to really fit into nicely has many facets.

I didn’t grow up in a family that didn’t speak English or had to face awkward situations because we were not white (except my sister, but that’s a different story). But I did relate to him as he describes himself as a young man who found knowledge and reading to be a thing that he hungered for and that quickly pushed him in key ways beyond the reach of those who set him up to go there.

He talks a lot about the “scholarship student” as a type, and I don’t know what studies or writings he is referring to when this was written, but my personal experience found a strange kinship with the author as he paints the picture of his difficulties in communicating with his loved ones when he knew writers like Milton, Homer, and Plato, and wrestled with those authors over things that most people never worry about or even know are debatable.

I felt deeply this experience and found it exciting and kinda comforting to hear that others feel these complex feelings as well.

For the rest of the book I was fascinated by his descriptions of private language, public language, and personal language. I think this will be something for me to ponder for quite some time.

His political statements were less impressive, but I have to admit that they were informed by his own real experiences and should not be dismissed just because they do not conform with current cultural expectations.

In the end, I found the writing to inspire the imagination, the moods deeply relatable, and the conclusions thought provoking.