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Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (An Autobiography)

by Richard Rodriguez

3.28 of 5 stars 3.28 · rating details · 1,957 ratings · 215 reviews

" This is what matters to me: the story of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer from college to discover bewildering silence, facing his parents. This is my story. An American Story ."

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 ...more

Paperback , Bantam edition , 199 pages

Published February 1983 by Bantam Books (first published 1981)

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Jan 01, 2009 Samira rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cultural

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 ...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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: ...more

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May 31, 2007 Diana rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 sadn ...more

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Feb 11, 2011 Gloria rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 b ...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Elliot Ratzman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“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 st ...more

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Apr 24, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction , biography , favorites , memoir

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 als ...more

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Feb 23, 2008 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 ear ...more

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Apr 21, 2009 Sandra rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Many of the essays in this collection are wonderful. I can relate to his feelings about being a child of immigrant Mexican parents and one of my favorite essays is the one about his complexion. It's when Rodriguez goes beyond the personal that he sometimes loses me. Many times his essays are abstract intellectual reflections that are obtuse enough for me to not care. Still, even some of those have nuggets of thought I find interesting and the most controversial are his feelings on bilingual educ ...more

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Aug 18, 2009 Juhi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hunger of Memory is about a Mexican American named Richard Rodriguez who goes to Sacremento to go to school. Not knowing much English he still wants to survive this new way of life and become something of himself. His family, his past, and his culture didn't support his dream of becoming a success. This story explains that Richard had to loose something in order to gain something, it explains how important a language is, how little things of a culture is important in a person. When you come into ...more

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May 16, 2007 Kristl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: readers of memoirs

Richard Rodriguez is stellar at making you internalize the pathos that he pretty much writes in blood on the pages of his book.

While the subject matter was interesting to me (Latino man finding his place in a country that does not accept him as he is), I could not relate much to flavor in which these sentiments were delivered.

Rodriguez's personality is one that had to fight his way through his journey of change. This very bittersweet uphill struggle is believable and not out of order at all.

I j ...more

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Jun 15, 2009 Marianne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I liked this book, ok. I mean I liked it because it was well-written but overall, it was just ok. I thought at first he was devling 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 fac ...more

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Apr 28, 2009 Araceli Sanchez rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 ...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography-memoirs , nonfiction

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, ...more

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Jan 11, 2015 Connor Sperling rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hunger of Memory is the personal account of Richard Rodriguez's troubles of being a bilingual student growing up in America. He questions the teaching approach that is used with bilingual students, as he believes that bilingual students should be educated with the public language, as not focusing enough on the public, in his situation English, and his first known language, Spanish, does not prepare him, as well as others, for the public world and does not give the bilingual student a fair chance ...more

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Mar 22, 2011 Kate rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

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.

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Aug 09, 2014 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 affir 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. ...more

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Feb 15, 2009 Crystal Belle rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Jan 11, 2015 Lauren Piller added it · review of another edition

In Richard Rodriguez's memoir, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Rodriguez does a brilliant job of painting a picture in his readers minds of what education meant to Native Americans, being the minority in a Sacramento school district. Throughout the course of the memoir, Rodriguez describes the hurtful behavior caused by his parents and his culture.
I enjoyed this novel and it spoke to me in the way that whenever I didn't feel like going to school, there is a child somewhe ...more

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Aug 05, 2010 Victoria rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: republicans

d1$Gr4C3 2 m@i r4c3

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Mar 09, 2014 Sro rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 hi ...more

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Jul 02, 2009 Simon_Cleveland_Ph.D. Simon_Cleveland_Ph.D. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I return to this book 8 years after I read if for the first time. Within minutes I find myself recalling the Sunday brunches my parents used to prepare for our entire family, the joyful sounds of my growing up in Virginia, after spending my early years in Eastern Europe. I intimately know the things Mr. Rodriguez writes about, because I've experienced them.

The book itself is an abstract approach to the original structure of an autobiography. It lacks the voluminous accounts of monthly or yearly ...more

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Nov 23, 2009 sdw rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: latino-studies , memoir

This book has languished on my bookshelf for years, ranking high on the list of books I was ashamed never to have read. On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I finally crossed it off the list. I could have told you that Rodriguez argues against bilingual education and against affirmative action. I could not have predicted how well-written the book is or how much I would enjoy it as a read. Some of Rodriguez’s arguments are rational – does affirmative action do enough to confront the class-based i ...more

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Aug 18, 2015 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 lif 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.
...more

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Jul 21, 2014 Lucero Nava rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lucero by: AP history teacher

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 ...more

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Jun 22, 2013 Anji rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an important book, and perhaps the most important book I've read in a while. In our society, we seldom differentiate between race and ethnicity, and we are quick to shy away from discussing class. As an educator, we repeatedly see income tied to standardized test results, yet no one wishes to discuss this. Well, not many do... other than Richard Rodriguez, who was against affirmative action but is honest enough to say how it simultaneously benefitted him and didn't go to those who most n ...more

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Apr 27, 2014 Gabriella rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well-written enough to maybe convince you of his beliefs, but, at its core, just an autobiography about an "exception" that thinks himself the "rule." Tries to speak on issues that affect the Mexican/Latino population in the U.S. at large (bilingual education, affirmative action) while simultaneously distancing himself completely from his identity as Mexican. Uses his personal experience to make broad political statements. Again, well-written, but his experiences should not be taken as political ...more

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Feb 07, 2014 Hannah Kwon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Undeniably well written and almost lyrically so.

His honesty seems to be wrapped in his revising of this story to ensure that its truth comes across not only to himself, but to his readers as well. Definitely an educational type of autobiography, but more for the reason that education itself has played such a humungous role in his life. There is such a refreshing and challenging thing about reading how passionate and convinced he is about his stance on issues like affirmative action and what it ...more

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Jul 07, 2015 Andre Jones Jr rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I could give this book 3.5 stars, or 4.1 stars, or 3.8 stars, or 3.2-4.3 stars, because Rodriguez is hard to love and hate. That said: I did enjoy reading it; Rodriguez writes with aplomb he says he doesn't actually have, and whiteness I know he kinda resents. In reality, Hunger of Memory should be, How Did I Get So White, Mom? And I know the answer, son: motherf*cker, you can't give white people that much f*ckin credit, motherf*cker. IDC how prevailing YOU THINK that alabaster is - Rodriguez co ...more

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Apr 06, 2015 Diana Marie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can relate because his point is this: our immigrant parents came to this country for a better opportunity for the kids. Once us kids benefit from that opportunity through advanced education or high-end careers, the unfortunate downside of success is a bit of distance from your roots, whether you like it or not. You simply grow because you're exposed to so many different things, as any young adult does. The way his story unfolds makes you feel for him and understand the situation. In the begin ...more

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Mar 24, 2014 Marissa Rodriguez rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a Mexican-American experiencing a similar childhood to Richard Rodriguez (my last name also being Rodriguez) I found this book extremely offensive. Despite the controversial aspect, fighting his culture vs. accepting it, the book consisted of constant complaints. This book presents an extremely negative view on Hispanic society. As a whole, I was extremely disappointed with the "renowned" Hunger of Memory.

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About Richard Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez is an American writer who became famous as the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982). His work has appeared in Harper's, The American Scholar, the Los Angeles 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 C ...more

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Books by Richard Rodriguez

Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father

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