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Richard Rodriguez

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other people named Richard Rodriguez, see Richard Rodriguez (disambiguation).
Richard Rodriguez
Rodriguez at the 2014 National Book Festival
Born (1944-07-31) July 31, 1944 (age 81)
San Francisco, California, United States
EducationChristian Brothers High School
Alma materStanford University (BA)
Columbia University (MA)
UC Berkeley, graduate study
Warburg Institute
OccupationJournalist
Agent(s)Georges Borchardt, Inc., 136 East 57th St., New York, NY 10022
Notable workHunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (autobiography)
TelevisionPBS Newshour
Parent(s)Leopoldo Rodriguez
Victoria Moran Rodriguez

Richard Rodriguez (born July 31, 1944) is an American writer who became famous as the author of the 1982 autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, a narrative about his intellectual development.

Early life

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Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944, into a Mexican immigrant family in San Francisco, California where he spoke Spanish until age 6. As a youth in Sacramento, California, he delivered newspapers and worked as a gardener.

Education

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Rodriguez went to Catholic school starting from age 6 at Sacred Heart School in Sacramento and graduated from Christian Brothers High School.

He received a BA from Stanford University in English in 1967, an MA in philosophy from Columbia University in 1969, and was a PhD candidate in English Renaissance literature at the University of California, Berkeley from 1969 to 1972. He also attended the Warburg Institute in London on a Fulbright fellowship in order to conduct research for his doctoral dissertation but ultimately did not complete the degree.[1]

Career

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Instead of pursuing a career in academia, Rodriguez suddenly decided to write freelance and take other temporary jobs. Rodriguez worked as a contributing editor to newspapers and magazines, including Harper's and the Los Angeles Times.[2]

His first book, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, was published in 1982 and won the Christopher Award. It was an account of his journey from being a "socially disadvantaged child" to becoming a fully assimilated American, from the Spanish-speaking world of his family to the wider, presumably freer, public world of English. However, the journey was not without costs: his American identity was achieved only after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture. "Americans like to talk about the importance of family values," said Rodriguez. "But America isn't a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home."

While the book received widespread critical acclaim and won several literary awards, it also stirred resentment because of Rodriguez's strong stands against bilingual education and affirmative action. Some Mexican Americans called him pocho, Americanized Mexican, accusing him of betraying himself and his people. Others called him a "coconut," brown on the outside, but white on the inside. He calls himself "a comic victim of two cultures."[3]

Rodriguez has worked as a teacher, international journalist, and educational consultant. His work has been published in Mother Jones and Time.[4] He has appeared regularly on the Public Broadcasting Service show, NewsHour.[5] Rodriguez's visual essays, Richard Rodriguez Essays, on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" earned Rodriguez a Peabody Award in 1997.[6]

Rodriguez's most recent book, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013), explores the important symbolism of the desert in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. In an interview before the book came out, Rodriguez reported that he was "interested in the fact that three great monotheistic religions were experienced within this ecology."[7] A sample of the project appeared in Harper's Magazine in January 2008. In his essay, "The God of the Desert: Jerusalem and the Ecology of Monotheism,"[8] Rodriguez portrays the desert as a paradoxical temple, its emptiness the requisite for God's elusive presence.

Personal life

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Rodriguez is queer.[3] He discussed his identity in his book of essays Days of Obligation.[9]

Awards

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Bibliography

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  • Hunger of memory: the education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)[14]
  • "Mexico's American Children" Harper's Magazine, July 1986[15]
  • "Late Victorians" Harper's Magazine, October 1990[16]
  • "Late Victorians" Harper's Magazine, October 1990[17]
  • Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992) - nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
  • Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002)
  • Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)
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References

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  1. ^ "Richard Rodriguez". Dictionary of Hispanic Biography. Gale. November 6, 1996. Gale K1611000359. Retrieved 2012-01-05 – via Fairfax County Public Library. Gale Biography In Context.
  2. ^ Perivolaris, J. D. (2001). Rodríguez, Richard 1944- In M. Jolly (Ed.), Encyclopedia of life writing: autobiographical and biographical forms. London, UK: Routledge. Retrieved from https://manowar.tamucc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/routlifewrite/rodr%C3%ADguez_richard_1944/0?institutionId=2313
  3. ^ a b London, Scott (August 1997), "A View From the Melting Pot: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez", The Sun, no. 260, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, retrieved 2012-01-06 Originally titled Crossing Borders - An Interview With Richard Rodriguez Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ Wyrick, Jean; Slaughter, Beverly J. (1999). The Rinehart Reader (third ed.). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. pp. 309, 586. ISBN 0-15-505512-7. (Thomson Heinle)
  5. ^ "NewsHour Essayists". PBS. Archived from the original on January 6, 2007. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
  6. ^ "Richard Rodriguez Essays (on American Life)". The Peabody Awards. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  7. ^ Rodriguez, Richard, "The God of the Desert" in The Best American Essays 2009, Ed. Mary Oliver (Mariner: Boston, 2009), 157
  8. ^ Rodriguez, Richard (2008-01-01). "The god of the desert". Harper's Magazine. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
  9. ^ Rodriguez, Richard (October 19, 1998), "My heterosexual dilemma", Salon.com, archived from the original on 2008-01-27, retrieved 2007-10-26
  10. ^ "Hunger of Memory". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  11. ^ "Charles Frankel Prize". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  12. ^ "Richard Rodriguez Essays (on American Life)". The Peabody Awards. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  13. ^ "About the Awards". www.commonwealthclub.org. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  14. ^ Rodriguez, Richard (2004-02-03). Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-553-89883-5.
  15. ^ "Mexico's American children, by Richard Rodriguez". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved 2026-03-25.
  16. ^ Rodriguez, Richard. "Late Victorians: It was no coincidence that homosexuals migrated to San Francisco in the Seventies, for the city was famed as a playful place, more Catholic than Protestant in its eschatological intuition.…". Harper's Magazine. Vol. October 1990. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2026-03-25.
  17. ^ Rodriguez, Richard. "Late Victorians: It was no coincidence that homosexuals migrated to San Francisco in the Seventies, for the city was famed as a playful place, more Catholic than Protestant in its eschatological intuition.…". Harper's Magazine. Vol. October 1990. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2026-03-25.
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External media
Audio
audio icon "Richard Rodriguez — The Fabric of Our Identity", On Being
audio icon "Richard Rodriguez—Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography." 7th Avenue Project, Oct. 13, 2013
Video
video icon Brown: The Last Discovery of America, Richard Rodriguez, writer, 2003 Melcher Book Award, WGBH News Forum May 14, 2003
video icon Video (and audio) conversation with Rodriguez and Kerry Howley on Bloggingheads.tv
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