Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

The 40th anniversary edition of an American classic: a “minority student” pays the cost of social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation―from his past, his parents, his culture. Exquisitely written, poignant and powerful, unsettling and controversial, this both a profound study of the importance of language and a moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.

Forty years ago, readers met the extraordinary writer Richard Rodriguez through the story of his own education. He would go on to win a loyal readership with Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), Brown: The Last Discovery of America, and Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. But first came Hunger of Memory, originally published by Godine in 1982.

Hunger of Memory is the story of a young Mexican-American, who began school in Sacramento, California knowing just fifty words of English, yet concluded his university studies in the reading room of the British Museum. In between, he fought a dramatic struggle between his public and private self.

A longtime resident of San Francisco, and an ardent opponent of easy labels and limited self-conceptions, Rodriguez describes himself as a “queer Catholic Indian Spaniard at home in a temperate Chinese city in a fading blond state in a post-Protestant nation.” Resisting the easy way of following received dogmatic and conventional thought, Rodriguez has also encountered hostility for his provocative positions on issues such as affirmative action and bilingual education. But the extraordinary clarity of his iconoclastic writing―the surprising twists in his thinking, the view of public policy as it limits individual lives, and the story he tells of an American education―have made this book endure for forty years and counting.

This edition includes a new afterword by the author as well as an introduction by Phillip Lopate. Whether you’re hearing about Richard Rodriguez for the first time, or have read him for years, whether his life is like your own or far from it, if you care about the power of language and original thinking, you owe yourself to read Hunger of Memory.

Richard Rodriguez, a master of the personal essay, has authored three books of intensely private memory woven with considerations of the great public issues of our time. He describes Hunger of Memory, Days of Obligation, Brown as a trilogy on class, ethnicity, and race, respectively. His most recent book is Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. Rodriquez’s books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award. His television essays on American life for The PBS NewsHour were recognized with a Peabody Award. He also has written and hosted documentaries on California and Mexico for U.S. and British television. He was a longtime contributor to Harper’s Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. Rodriguez has lived most of his life in California.

Phillip Lopate is an essayist, novelist, and poet. He is a central figure in the revival of the American essay, and his book The Art of the Personal Essay is considered a classic. He has edited numerous anthologies, most recently, The Glorious American Essay and The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970. He is a professor of nonfiction at Columbia University.