Nationality United States Name Richard Rodriguez | Role Writer Home town Sacramento | |
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Ethnicity Mestizo or Mexican-American Alma mater Stanford University, B.A. in English, 1967Columbia University M.A. in philosophy, 1969University of California, Berkeley, graduate study in English Renaissance literature 1969-72Warburg Institute, London, dissertation research, 1972-73 Agent Georges Borchardt, Inc., 136 East 57th St., New York, NY 10022 Parents Leopoldo Rodriguez, Victoria Moran Rodriguez Awards National Humanities Medal, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Books Hunger of Memory, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography, Days of Obligation, Brown, Re‑Introducing God | ||
Richard rodriguez on darling a spiritual biography
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.
Contents
- Richard rodriguez on darling a spiritual biography
- Richard rodriguez
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Current Project
- References
Richard rodriguez
Early life
Richard Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944, into a Mexican immigrant family in Sacramento, California. Rodriguez spoke Spanish until he went to a Catholic school at age six. As a youth in Sacramento, California, he delivered newspapers and worked as a gardener. He graduated from Sacramento's Christian Brothers High School.
Career
Rodriguez received a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.A. from Columbia University, was a Ph.D. candidate in English Renaissance literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and attended the Warburg Institute in London on a Fulbright fellowship. A noted prose stylist, Rodriguez has worked as a teacher, international journalist, and educational consultant and has appeared regularly on the PBS show, NewsHour. Rodriguez's visual essays''Richard Rodriguez Essays—on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" earned Rodriguez a Peabody Award in 1997. 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; and Brown: The Last Discovery of America. Rodriguez's works have also been published in Harper's Magazine, Mother Jones, and Time.
Instead of pursuing a career in academia, Rodriguez suddenly decided to write freelance and take other temporary jobs. 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. But the journey was not without costs: his American identity was only achieved after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture. "Americans like to talk about the importance of family values," says 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 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, white on the inside. He calls himself "a comic victim of two cultures."
Personal life
Rodriguez is openly gay. He came out in his book of essays Days of Obligation.
Current Project
At present, Rodriguez is writing a book on Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and the desert. Rodriguez reports that he is "interested in the fact that three great monotheistic religions were experienced within this ecology." A sample of this project appeared in Harper's Magazine (January 2008). In this essay, "The God of the Desert," Rodriguez portrays the desert as a paradoxical temple—its emptiness the requisite for God's elusive presence.