Rating: 
Summary: English is not a toy.
Review: "European vocabularies do not have a silence rich enough to describe the force within Indian contemplation. Only Shakespeare understood that Indians have eyes." (p. 23) And how would Mr. Rodriquez know anything about the force of Indian contemplation? He doesn't allow Americans, among whom he numbers himself, to know much of anything. And what's this about Shakespeare? Didn't he just say something about European vocabularies?
Informed by his immersion in Elizabethan English, Rodriguez fashions poetry out of absurdity, misanthropy and breathtaking contradiction. He fools high school kids (and it seems a lot have been assigned this book), but the educated, well read adult will be skeptical. How can he complain that he was taught that the Indians were gone, then drag multicultural education through the mud? I'm ANGRY that U.S. history was fed to me divorced from North America. I thought Montezuma was a legend! I defend all efforts at inclusion even when some ridiculous stuff comes along with it--"Ebonics," for example. Keep those ideas coming!
And why is it that the people who have benefited most from affirmative action spit in its face? It's especially odd coming from a man whose parents moved to the U.S. for the express purpose of bettering their children.
Rodriguez is entertaining on the topic of alienation, but he's the perfect example of why I've yearned for a minority gripe: It gives the human soul a hook on which to hang the cloak all mortals wear, the weight of an ineffable sense of elegiac separation from God and other people. It's not about being Mexican/American, it's about the human condition: Read the poetry of the precortesian Mexican philosopher Nezahualcoyotl, who, as King of Texcoco, was hardly a stranger in a strange land.
Warning to readers: Rodriguez saves all his personal attacks for women. If you find man-hating literature tiresome, which I do, beware misogyny from a man who waxes lyrical about bedpans.
Rodriguez strives valiantly to be Octavio Paz, and is even trotted out as our answer to Mexico's Nobel laureate. (See, we Americans can search our souls in inscrutable, contradictory ways, too!) My advice? READ OCTAVIO PAZ INSTEAD. At least he loved life.
Rating: 
Summary: politically less controversial than "Hunger"-intentional?
Review: As always, Rodriguez is articulate and freshly inciteful, but by comparison to his earlier work "Hunger of Memory", "Days of Obligation" is less captivating. One wonders if in fact all the controversy surrounding the author and the attacks waged against him did not effect a political retreat from his earlier views (which were taken at face value as attacking Mexican "immigrant" culture as "static" and introvertive, while promoting Americanization as progressive). It appears the book is a more bland, and for that less "confrontational" search for identity, and roots. Ultimately, though the author, perhaps unconsciously elucidates the alienation that some Mexicans who've "made it" or become significantly acculturated into the American mainstream feel as a new breed. Not to say the least but although the book is beautifully poetic at times, and quite expressive, capturing in words feelings that for many of Mexican (or other recently immigrant) background have been locked away deeply for fear of remembering, much of the book's subjects are not immediately memorable the way much of "Hunger" was. In this book the author seems to be indirectly apologizing for his earlier views, or at best ineffectively trying to clarify his earlier position on the value and importance of Mexican culture
Rating:
Summary: politically less controversial than "Hunger"-intentional?
Review: As always, Rodriguez is articulate and freshly inciteful, but by comparison to his earlier work "Hunger of Memory", "Days of Obligation" is less captivating. One wonders if in fact all the controversy surrounding the author and the attacks waged against him did not effect a political retreat from his earlier views (which were taken at face value as attacking Mexican "immigrant" culture as "static" and introvertive, while promoting Americanization as progressive). It appears the book is a more bland, and for that less "confrontational" search for identity, and roots. Ultimately, though the author, perhaps unconsciously elucidates the alienation that some Mexicans who've "made it" or become significantly acculturated into the American mainstream feel as a new breed. Not to say the least but although the book is beautifully poetic at times, and quite expressive, capturing in words feelings that for many of Mexican (or other recently immigrant) background have been locked away deeply for fear of remembering, much of the book's subjects are not immediately memorable the way much of "Hunger" was. In this book the author seems to be indirectly apologizing for his earlier views, or at best ineffectively trying to clarify his earlier position on the value and importance of Mexican culture
Rating: 
Summary: Not good!
Review: Boring, Boring, Boring.
But hey, atleast the book is consistent.
Rating: 
Summary: The Truth Is Within The Pages
Review: Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father is an excellent testimony of a life caught in, between, behind, and ahead of two (and one and many) worlds. The two major themes of this peculiarly beautiful book, those of comedy and tragedy, parallel each other as in a fugue, one theme high, piercing and begging, the other, low, somber, and measured. They find themselves manifested in the interplays between optimism and pessimism, Protestantism and Catholicism, between youthful (and naive) faith in possibility and middle-aged pessimism and the knowledge that, in the final analysis, "death is the vantage point from which life must be seen." In Rodriguez' essays, the United States is the land of youthful optimism, imbibed with Protestantism, whereas ancient Mexico, carriers of the knowledge of Original Sin, is a land of cynicism. However, the author skillfully exposes the paradoxes of this dichotomizing assumption. Ironically, the United States is suffering from loneliness and moral decadence as a result of its uncompromising individualism, while Mexico, a country in which the majority of the population will soon be under the age of 15, will abound with youth. This is a beautiful book about California, America, Mexico, and the complexity of life in these slowly disuniting States.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent reflection of a life caught in and between...
Review: Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father is an excellent testimony of a life caught in, between, behind, and ahead of two (and one and many) worlds. The two major themes of this peculiarly beautiful book, those of comedy and tragedy, parallel each other as in a fugue, one theme high, piercing and begging, the other, low, somber, and measured. They find themselves manifested in the interplays between optimism and pessimism, Protestantism and Catholicism, between youthful (and naive) faith in possibility and middle-aged pessimism and the knowledge that, in the final analysis, "death is the vantage point from which life must be seen." In Rodriguez' essays, the United States is the land of youthful optimism, imbibed with Protestantism, whereas ancient Mexico, carriers of the knowledge of Original Sin, is a land of cynicism. However, the author skillfully exposes the paradoxes of this dichotomizing assumption. Ironically, the United States is suffering from loneliness and moral decadence as a result of its uncompromising individualism, while Mexico, a country in which the majority of the population will soon be under the age of 15, will abound with youth. This is a beautiful book about California, America, Mexico, and the complexity of life in these slowly disuniting States.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Is Within The Pages
Review: I am a high school student. Recently in my American Literature class, I am learning about assimilation. I think that "Days of Obligation" is revealing a level of truth that I am never exposed to before. I especially found the part about Asian to be very interesting. This is a very good book because it helped to see myself in the book. A lot of what the book is saying, I can relate to because it takes place in a very familiar setting. This book goes hand and hand with "A Hunger of Memory". I found this book to be more in detailed compare to the first book that Mr. Rodriguez wrote. After reading the two books, I like "A Hunger of Memory" a little bit better because it was more interesting because it moved from one topic to another. The second book is divided into a new topic each chapter of the book. I failed to see why is this book title the way that it is. I guess that it is because Mr. Rodriguez was dealing with the situation that he was faced with the way that he wanted to and not they way that his father wanted him to. I would recommend this book to everyone. America is a land of immigrants. I believe that everyone can learn something about himself or herself as they pick up this book and start reading it today.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Is Within The Pages
Review: I am a high school student. Recently in my American Literature class, I am learning about assimilation. I think that "Days of Obligation" is revealing a level of truth that I am never exposed to before. I especially found the part about Asian to be very interesting. This is a very good book because it helped to see myself in the book. A lot of what the book is saying, I can relate to because it takes place in a very familiar setting. This book goes hand and hand with "A Hunger of Memory". I found this book to be more in detailed compare to the first book that Mr. Rodriguez wrote. After reading the two books, I like "A Hunger of Memory" a little bit better because it was more interesting because it moved from one topic to another. The second book is divided into a new topic each chapter of the book. I failed to see why is this book title the way that it is. I guess that it is because Mr. Rodriguez was dealing with the situation that he was faced with the way that he wanted to and not they way that his father wanted him to. I would recommend this book to everyone. America is a land of immigrants. I believe that everyone can learn something about himself or herself as they pick up this book and start reading it today.
Rating:
Summary: A controversial voice that deserves to be heard
Review: In this and his other collection of personal essays, "Hunger of Memory," Richard Rodriguez describes how becoming an American has been an experience much like Alice's trip through the looking glass. It has distanced him from his Mexican-born parents and separated him almost entirely from his Mexican roots. The central idea running through many of these thoughtful, earnest essays is a heightened awareness of the differences between our public and private lives. They also focus on the impact of education on himself and his siblings as children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. After reading his books, nothing about becoming American seems as simple as it's often represented in popular fiction and movies. You see, for example, how learning English and the way Americans use it immediately create cultural conflicts. Rodriguez' parents had valued education as a way to get ahead in America. Ironically, the greater success he experienced in school, the further he became removed from the world of his parents. Still a boy, he lost the ability to converse in Spanish. Becoming a public figure in the English-speaking world, he seemed to betray his ethnic background, which valued privacy and separateness from the English-speaking (gringo) world. Ironically, for all his achievements as an "American," Rodriguez learns that because of his background, he remains in many ways an outsider. Lacking a middle class upbringing, he has passed through the educational system as a "scholarship boy." This term, borrowed from Richard Hoggart's book "The Uses of Literacy," describes the son of working class parents who is granted the privilege of a middle class education, but while rising above his humble origins, never fully transcends them. The political positions Rodreguez takes as an adult flow as a logical extension from the experiences that shaped him -- especially the benefits of the education he received in a private school. Later there were the benefits that came to him as a "minority student" -- advantages he considered unwarranted. Concerned by poverty in America and the underfunding of schools that would help end poverty, he takes positions that have been unpopular among many educators. In these essays, he challenges the assumptions underlying both affirmative action and bilingual education. Rodriguez writes with great clarity, and his sentences seem crafted with considerable care. He wants very much to say precisely what he means. And this cannot have been always easy, as many of his ideas grapple with both irony and paradox. Often you read paragraphs that seem to have been thought through deeply, then carefully written and rewritten. The care that he takes in writing these essays reflects a wish to be read carefully. Those who have found reason to be offended, angered, or "bored" by his ideas are evidence that he touches on a great many sensitive issues.
Rating:
Summary: A controversial voice that deserves to be heard
Review: In this and his other collection of personal essays, "Hunger of Memory," Richard Rodriguez describes how becoming an American has been an experience much like Alice's trip through the looking glass. It has distanced him from his Mexican-born parents and separated him almost entirely from his Mexican roots. The central idea running through many of these thoughtful, earnest essays is a heightened awareness of the differences between our public and private lives. They also focus on the impact of education on himself and his siblings as children of Spanish-speaking immigrants. After reading his books, nothing about becoming American seems as simple as it's often represented in popular fiction and movies. You see, for example, how learning English and the way Americans use it immediately create cultural conflicts. Rodriguez' parents had valued education as a way to get ahead in America. Ironically, the greater success he experienced in school, the further he became removed from the world of his parents. Still a boy, he lost the ability to converse in Spanish. Becoming a public figure in the English-speaking world, he seemed to betray his ethnic background, which valued privacy and separateness from the English-speaking (gringo) world. Ironically, for all his achievements as an "American," Rodriguez learns that because of his background, he remains in many ways an outsider. Lacking a middle class upbringing, he has passed through the educational system as a "scholarship boy." This term, borrowed from Richard Hoggart's book "The Uses of Literacy," describes the son of working class parents who is granted the privilege of a middle class education, but while rising above his humble origins, never fully transcends them. The political positions Rodreguez takes as an adult flow as a logical extension from the experiences that shaped him -- especially the benefits of the education he received in a private school. Later there were the benefits that came to him as a "minority student" -- advantages he considered unwarranted. Concerned by poverty in America and the underfunding of schools that would help end poverty, he takes positions that have been unpopular among many educators. In these essays, he challenges the assumptions underlying both affirmative action and bilingual education. Rodriguez writes with great clarity, and his sentences seem crafted with considerable care. He wants very much to say precisely what he means. And this cannot have been always easy, as many of his ideas grapple with both irony and paradox. Often you read paragraphs that seem to have been thought through deeply, then carefully written and rewritten. The care that he takes in writing these essays reflects a wish to be read carefully. Those who have found reason to be offended, angered, or "bored" by his ideas are evidence that he touches on a great many sensitive issues.
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