Richard Rodriguez

Born the third of four children to Mexican immigrant parents, Richard Rodriguez grew up in Sacramento, California. He was raised in a Spanish-speaking household until he entered Catholic school at age six, at which point his parents began speaking English at home in the hopes of improving Rodriguez’s confidence in his English-only classroom. In Hunger of Memory Rodriguez marks this as a turning point in his life. After doing well in secondary school, Rodriguez went on to receive his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and his master’s degree from Columbia. He also spent a year in England working on his dissertation as a Fulbright Scholar. As he advanced in the world of academia, Rodriguez became more and more uncomfortable with the various successes he was achieving, attributing them to his status as a “minority” scholar. In the mid-1970s, just as he was beginning to receive national attention for his essays criticizing affirmative action, Rodriguez made the decision to leave academia for good, turning down teaching offers at several prestigious universities. Funded in part by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Rodriguez spent the next six years after his departure from academia at work on what would become Hunger of Memory, which was ultimately published in 1982 to great acclaim. Since then, Rodriguez has continued writing and giving interviews, though none of his work has become as popular or well-known as Hunger of Memory.