Richard Rodriguez
Overview
Richard Rodriguez is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer who became famous as the author of Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez is a 1982 autobiography by Chicano intellectual Richard Rodriguez. The book, written as several separate essays, narrates Rodriguez's educational history....

(1982), a narrative about his intellectual development.
Richard Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944, into a Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....

 immigrant family in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

. Rodriguez spoke Spanish until he went to a Catholic school at age six. As a youth in Sacramento, California
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...

, he delivered newspapers and worked as a gardener
Gardening
Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants. Ornamental plants are normally grown for their flowers, foliage, or overall appearance; useful plants are grown for consumption , for their dyes, or for medicinal or cosmetic use...

. He graduated from Sacramento's Christian Brothers High School.
Rodriguez received a B.A.
Quotations

The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.

"Night and Day" in Frontiers (1990)

As you see yourself, I once saw myself; as you see me now, you will be seen.

Quoting a Mexican proverb in "Night and Day" in Frontiers (1990)

I write about race in America in hopes of undermining the notion of race in America.

The Indian refuses civilization; the African slave is rendered unfit for it. But cher Monsieur: You saw the Indian sitting beside the African on a drape of baize. They were easy together. The sight of them together does not lead you to wonder about a history in which you are not the narrator?These women are but parables of your interest in yourself. Rather than consider the nature of their intimacy, you are preoccupied alone with the meaning of your intrusion.

A boy named Buddy came up beside me in the schoolyard. I don't remember what passed as prologue, but I do not forget what Buddy divulged to me: If you're white, you're all right; If you're brown, stick around; If you're black, stand back. It was as though Buddy had taken me to a mountaintop and shown me the way things lay in the city below.

In Sacramento, my brown was not halfway between black and white. On the leafy streets, on the east side of town, where my family lived, where Asians did not live, where Negroes did not live, my family's Mexican shades passed as various.

 
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