Rating: 
Summary: Shameful
Review: Over 20 years ago I served on the working board of a project on Mexican Americans sponsored by a big metropolitan library. Among the things I did was suggest titles for their Chicano collection. One day our link librarian spoke of a "new exciting book"(Hunger of Memory). I purchased it. I am a Cuban who immersed herself in Mexican American culture and literature, both as an educator and a journalist. I hated the book. How dare this character look down on his roots, his language at a time when great people from his ethnic background were instilling pride in their communities. Hinojosa, Anaya, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Tomas Rivera, to name a few.
To put it in perspective, this book came out after ROOTS, a book that made ethnicity popular and acceptable. Rodriguez, a product of affirmative action decries the policy that opened new doors for him. He hates what he sees in the mirror. He comments that when he walks into a London hotel people should assume that his dark skin is not a racial trait, but the result of skiing in the Alps. As an old woman, retired from Academia after 35 years of teaching, having raised children and grandchildren, having spent a number or years at a historically Black university, I hope that my legacy to the youth of this, my adopted country, is to have pride in their roots, respect and feel proud of the deprivations and adversities their forefathers endured and overcame, and rejoice in the diversity of our people. After wo years I still see Richard Rodriguez as a pathetic figure.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant Analysis of Identity and Culture
Review: This is truly an amazing work by Richard Rodriguez. He touches on the very nature of personal identity, and how one's public identity interacts with the majority culture. Rodriguez is definitely a "pocho," but perhaps that is why I, and I suspect many others, relate to him so fully. Hunger of Memory is much more than a coming of age story; it is a journey of self realization and cultural observation. For anyone who has ever felt a part of two different worlds, yet not fully resembled either, this is the book to read. It compels you to think beyond convention, and search your soul.
| 
