Richard Rodriguez (born July 31, 1944) is an American writer who became famous as the author of ''
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez'' (1982), a narrative about his intellectual development.
Early life
He was born on July 31, 1944, into a
Mexican immigrant family in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. Rodriguez spoke
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
until he went to a
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
school at 6. As a youth in
Sacramento, California
)
, image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg
, mapsize = 250x200px
, map_caption = Location within Sacramento C ...
, he delivered newspapers and worked as a
gardener
A gardener is someone who practices gardening, either professionally or as a hobby.
Description
A gardener is any person involved in gardening, arguably the oldest occupation, from the hobbyist in a residential garden, the home-owner suppleme ...
. He graduated from Sacramento's
Christian Brothers High School.
Career
Rodriguez received a B.A. from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, an M.A. from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, was a Ph.D. candidate in English Renaissance literature at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, and attended the
Warburg Institute
The Warburg Institute is a research institution associated with the University of London in central London, England. A member of the School of Advanced Study, its focus is the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture – cros ...
in London on a
Fulbright fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
.
[ A noted prose stylist, Rodriguez has worked as a ]teacher
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
, international journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
, and educational consultant, and he has appeared regularly on the Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educati ...
show, ''NewsHour
''Newshour'' is BBC World Service's flagship international news and current affairs radio programme, which is broadcast twice daily: weekdays at 1400, weekends at 1300 and nightly at 2100 (UK time). Each edition lasts one hour. It consists of ...
''. Rodriguez's visual essays
''Richard Rodriguez Essays''
on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" earned Rodriguez a Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
in 1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
. Rodriguez’s books include ''Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez'' (1982), a collection of autobiographical essays; ''Mexico's Children'' (1990); ''Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father'' (1992), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
; ''Brown: The Last Discovery of America'' (2002); and ''Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography'' (2013). Rodriguez's works have also been published in ''Harper's Magazine
''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...
'', ''Mother Jones
Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She h ...
'', and ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
''.
Instead of pursuing a career in academia, Rodriguez suddenly decided to write freelance and take other temporary jobs. Rodriguez worked as a contributing editor to newspapers and magazines, including ''Harpers'' and the ''Los Angeles Times.'' His first book, ''Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez'', was published in 1982. It was an account of his journey from being a "socially disadvantaged child" to becoming a fully assimilated American, from the Spanish-speaking world of his family to the wider, presumably freer, public world of English. However, the journey was not without costs: his American identity was achieved only after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture. "Americans like to talk about the importance of family values," said Rodriguez. "But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home."
While the book received widespread critical acclaim and won several literary awards, it also stirred resentment because of Rodriguez's strong stands against bilingual education
In bilingual education, students are taught in two (or more) languages. It is distinct from learning a second language as a subject because both languages are used for instruction in different content areas like math, science, and history. The t ...
and affirmative action. Some Mexican Americans called him ''pocho'', Americanized Mexican, accusing him of betraying himself and his people. Others called him a "coconut," brown on the outside, but white on the inside. He calls himself "a comic victim of two cultures."[ Originally title]
Crossing Borders - An Interview With Richard Rodriguez
Rodriguez's most recent book, ''Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography'' (2013), explores the important symbolism of the desert in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. In an interview before the book came out, Rodriguez reported that he was "interested in the fact that three great monotheistic religions were experienced within this ecology." A sample of the project appeared in ''Harper's Magazine'' (January 2008). In this essay, "The God of the Desert: Jerusalem and the Ecology of Monotheism," Rodriguez portrays the desert as a paradoxical temple, its emptiness the requisite for God's elusive presence.
Personal life
Rodriguez is gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
. He came out
Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity.
Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...
in his book of essays ''Days of Obligation''.
Bibliography
*
* [Extract from ]
*"Late Victorians" 1990. Harpers Magazine, October 1990
References
Further reading
*''America
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
'', May 22, 1982, pp. 403–404; September 23, 1995, p. 8.
*''The Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America, North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. ...
'', fall-winter, 1988, pp. 75–90.
*''American Scholar
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
'', spring, 1983, pp. 278–285, winter, 1994, p. 145.
*''Booklist
''Booklist'' is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. ''Booklist''s primary audience consists of libraries, educators, and booksellers. The magazine is av ...
'', March 1, 2002, Bill Ott, review of Brown: The Last Discovery of America, p. 1184.
*'' Christian Science Monitor Monthly'', March 12, 1982, pp. B1, B3.
*''Commentary
Commentary or commentaries may refer to:
Publications
* ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee
* Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...
'', July 1982, pp. 82–84.
*', fall, 1985, pp. 25–34.
*''Melus
Melus (also ''Milus'' or ''Meles'', ''Melo'' in Italian) (died 1020) was a Lombard nobleman from the Apulian town of Bari, whose ambition to carve for himself an autonomous territory from the Byzantine catapanate of Italy in the early eleventh ...
'', spring, 1987, pp. 3–15.
*''The New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
'', November 22, 1992, p. 42; April 7, 2002, Anthony Walton, "Greater than All the Parts, " p. 7.
*''Reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
'', August–September 1994, p. 35.
*''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'', January 25, 1993, p. 70.
*''Tribune
Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...
Books'' (Chicago, IL), December 13, 1992, p. 1.
*''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
Book World'', November 15, 1992, p. 3.*
* Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. ''Tongue Ties: Logo-Eroticism in Anglo-Hispanic Literature''. Palgrave, 2003.
External links
*
Profile at Perspectives in American Literature
*
*
* Jo Scott-Coe (Winter 2008)
American Paradoxes
''Narrative Magazine
''Narrative'' is an online magazine and website that is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age and publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art. It was founded in 2003.
History and profile
Founded in 2003, the l ...
''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez, Richard
1944 births
Living people
Academics of the Warburg Institute
Alumni of the Warburg Institute
American memoirists
American writers of Mexican descent
Columbia University alumni
Emmy Award winners
American gay writers
Harper's Magazine people
Hispanic and Latino American journalists
LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people
American LGBT journalists
LGBT memoirists
LGBT people from California
National Humanities Medal recipients
Peabody Award winners
Stanford University alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
Writers from Sacramento, California
Writers from San Francisco
Fulbright alumni