The Education of Richard Rodriguez

I am . . . taken by the symbols of leisure and wealth. . . . For me those . . . symbols are reassuring reminders of public success. I tempt vulgarity to be reassured. I am filled with the gaudy delight, the monstrous grace of the nouveau riche (136-137).

The book qualifies as an ~"intellectual" autobiography because the author focuses on his own mind, his own reflections on his life, his own often painful self-consciousness. This reader came to feel trapped in the mind of this man because he is so relentlessly focused on his own thinking, his own suffering, and he offers little hope that he is going to ever be anything but alienated and embittered at society's misshaping of him.

The heart of this intellectual autobiography is the author's childhood and his relationship with his family. His greatest alienation is with his parents, and, as with the author's other complaints, this problem seems insoluble. He writes in the beginning of the book that this split from his parents is most important to him:

. . .
country, between his past and his present, and between the two cultures of whites and Mexican-Americans. The greatest difference perhaps is between the author and himself. Rodriguez stands out from many if not most other Mexican-Americans, in that he is against affirmative action and bilingual education. He is against being treated as a minority. He sees his life as a student---a "minority student"---as an important part of his formation. However, he is aware that he has achieved success precisely because he was the recipient of such minority-oriented programs. He is torn because he has thus benefitted, but at the same time he feels guilty at having prevented some non-minority students from having such a privileged education, and finally he is angry at having been so assimilated into the Anglo culture. Bibliography Rodriguez, Richard. Hunger of Memory. New York: Bantam, 1982. Malcolm X, in his autobiography, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, writes what is essentially a quest for identity. This identity involves politics, race, social issues, history, and a multitude of other factors, but what Malcolm's book and his quest boil down to is a matter of personal identity. As Ossie Davis writes in the book's final pages, the bla
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Richard Rodriguez, Ossie Davis, Black Muslims, Africa Mecca, Malcolm X---the, Holy World, Autobiography Malcolm, Elijah Muhammad, Elijah Instead, Muslims Malcolm, black muslims, intellectual autobiography, quest identity, personal spiritual, quest personal spiritual, quest personal, rodriguez' intellectual autobiography, autobiography malcolm, spiritual identity, muslims seek, richard rodriguez, bilingual education, personal spiritual identity, black muslims seek,
Approximate Word count = 1567
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)