Rodriguez, Richard (1944–)

Richard Rodriguez is a writer, journalist, television commentator, and public speaker who writes primarily about U.S. culture. His views have stirred lively discussions among readers, academics, and critics. Born on July 31, 1944, of Mexican parents in San Francisco, Rodriguez received a BA from Stanford University and an MA from Columbia University; he then attended the University of California—Berkeley, where he did doctoral work in English Renaissance literature. His Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982) generated numerous reviews, some praising the book, others denouncing it. Chicano studies scholars criticized it for implicitly challenging the Chicano/Chicana movement's understanding of Mexican American politics and culture, especially Rodriguez's open embrace of assimilation and opposition to affirmative action and bilingual education. His other two books, 1992's Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (where he disclosed his homosexuality) and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002) focus particularly on issues of ethnicity, sexuality, and race.

See alsoHispanics in the United States .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alarcón, Norma. "Tropology of Hunger: The 'Miseducation' of Richard Rodriguez." In The Ethnic Canon: Histories, Institutions, and Interventions, ed. David Palumbo-Liu, pp. 140-152. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

Aldama, Frederick Luis. "Arturo Islas's and Richard Rodriguez's Ethnosexual Re-architexturing of Metropolitan Space." In his Brown on Brown: Chicano/a Representations of Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity, pp. 73-88. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

Romero, Rolando J. "Richard Rodriguez." In Latino and Latina Writers, ed. Alan West-Durán, María Herrera-Sobek, and César A. Salgado, vol. 1, pp. 455-474. New York: Scribners, 2004.

                                Mark A. HernÁndez