Hunger of Memory

Richard Rodriguez (b. July 31, 1944) is a prominent public intellectual, author, and essayist whose writing is especially concerned with education, minority identity, and language. He earned a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Columbia University, and studied at the doctoral level at the University of California, Berkeley.

In his memoir, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), Rodriguez explores how his education shaped him. Across a prologue and six chapters, Rodriguez traces how being forced to learn English in elementary school forever changed his life. Rodriguez’s parents, both Mexican American, spoke Spanish at home. Until Rodriguez began elementary school, he was surrounded by Spanish. When he was required to learn English, Rodriguez experienced a divide between his parents and the outer world, a divide between the English-speaking public sphere and the Spanish-speaking private sphere. This was a difficult transition for Rodriguez, and the distance it placed between him and his parents was only strengthened by his love for language and literature. The more schooling Rodriguez got, the less he felt connected to his parents and his family’s culture. Rodriguez disagrees with the bilingual education movement, which presses for students to speak their native language at school as well as at home. However painful the divide between home and the public sphere, Rodriguez realizes that learning English was a gift that allowed him to succeed in school and in his profession. Speaking exclusively Spanish would have made it difficult to assimilate, a trouble his parents could never fully overcome, and would have polluted the sacred intimacy of the home language.

Catholicism was an important part of Rodriguez’s life, as he grew up in a Catholic family and attended a Catholic school. His family lived in a middle-class neighborhood that was primarily composed of gringos (non-Latino or white people). In the Catholic neighborhood, church, and school, his family was welcomed. An early fascination with liturgy and Catholicism helped Rodriguez become someone concerned with theory and scholarship, though he later identified as a more liberal Catholic.

Rodriguez’s dark complexion impacted his life by making him feel unattractive and wary of taking jobs where he could be mistaken for a servant or laborer. His mother was especially concerned with his darker complexion and fretted about him becoming tan in the sun. Perhaps in response to her worries, Rodriguez took a summer job working in construction after college. He felt more comfortable in his skin and became tanner. However, Rodriguez realized he would never truly be like his working-class colleagues. The construction crew would sometimes hire Mexican alien workers for extra help. Rodriguez felt uncomfortable and awkward around them. When asked to translate on behalf of the boss, Rodriguez realized how deeply the Mexican workers’ silence bothered him. With his mastery of English, Rodriguez could never be boxed in like they were, oppressed by their inability to speak the dominant language.

The Civil Rights Movement led by southern Black activists radically changed the landscape of higher education with the push for affirmative action. Rodriguez had already been accepted at elite colleges and universities, so he felt like he was accepted as a minority before the push for affirmative action. In fact, he opposed affirmative action, because he felt that it left economically and socially disadvantaged students of any race behind by prioritizing middle- and upper-class minority admissions. He also believed that universities failed to meet the specialized needs of minority students, some of whom he felt were unqualified to meet the demands of an elite college or university. The Chicano Movement of the 1960s was embraced by Latino students who wished to adopt the culture and style of lower-class Mexican Americans. Rodriguez felt they were hypocritical and almost absurd, yet he craved their approval and was also intimidated by them. Ultimately, Rodriguez abandoned his plans to enter academia after graduate school because he felt his work would have been unable to stand on its own merits without being tainted by his status as a minority hire. He turned instead to a life of writing.

In closing, Rodriguez acknowledges how language and education have allowed him to rise above his middle-class background. Fluency in English divided him from his family in a painful way, yet allowed for his success. He realizes that he will never be able to explain to his parents why he talks about his family life and childhood. Rodriguez is grateful for his gift with English, and he recognizes the unique—and lonely—conditions of his education that have enabled him to reveal his private life in this memoir.