Richard Rodriguez made a name for himself in the literary world and gained media attention unprecedented for a Mexican American writer with the 1981 publication of his autobiography, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. While the book garnered widespread praise for its honest and sensitive treatment of the author's educational experiences, it received more notice for its passionate attacks of bilingual education and the affirmative action programs that helped to fund his career as a student. Angering supporters of these fundamental programs of the liberal establishment, Rodriguez's controversial message found a welcome audience in conservative circles. With the publication of his second book, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, Rodriguez--who works as a journalist and essayist for the PBS-sponsored MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour while continuing to write--proved to many critics that the literary quality of his writing transcended his political message. "That Richard Rodriguez is a masterful writer, there is no dispute," contended the Miami Herald 's Alfonso Chardy. "Everyone agrees on that point, even Rodriguez's harshest critics."

Born July 31, 1944, in San Francisco, Rodriguez was the third of four children born to working-class Mexican immigrants. While raising the family in Sacramento, his father, Leopoldo Rodriguez, worked as a dental technician while his mother, Victoria Moran Rodriguez, stayed at home with the children and worked part-time as a typist. "They were nobody's victims," Rodriguez stated in Hunger of Memory. "Optimism and ambition led them to a house many blocks from the Mexican south side of town. We lived among gringos and only a block from the biggest, whitest houses."

Learns English, Gains Confidence

For the first five years of his life, Rodriguez spoke only Spanish, knowing just enough English to run errands for his mother at stores a block away from his home. The familiar sounds of Spanish were soon invaded with the strange words of the English language when young Richard's parents enrolled him in the local Catholic school. Frustrated by six months of silence and little progress, three Irish nuns from the school visited the Rodriguezes and insisted that Richard practice his English at home. His parents were obedient to the "Church's authority," Rodriguez recalled in Hunger of Memory. "They agreed to give up the language that had revealed and accentuated our family's closeness. The moment after the visitors left, the change was observed. "Ahora, speak to us en ingles, ' my father and mother united to tell us." With the acquisition of a new language came the acceptance of a new identity: "At last, seven years old, I came to believe what had been technically true since my birth: I was...