A review by shirleytupperfreeman
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez

At first I wasn't sure I would like this intellectual memoir of growing up poor and brown in 1950s and 1960s America but I did like it. Richard Rodriguez is the son of Mexican immigrants. He began his formal education as a 'scholarship boy' at a Catholic school in Sacramento and ended with a PhD in English literature many years later. His analysis of the costs of assimilation into a new class and culture is based on deep experience. In spite of those costs, he feels strongly that affirmative action programs which try to ameliorate those costs do more harm than good. It's a lovely book describing an often lonely life.