ies in trying to live in two cultures at once---Mexican and American. He sees himself as an outcast in society, separated from almost everything and everybody around him because of all these formative factors. The reader might ask how a man who has achieved such personal, artistic, professional and economic success could be so miserable. Rodriguez does appreciate the higher standard of living his education and talent have given him, but he also sees that this education has separated him from the Mexican culture which he loves. When his mother writes him in dismay after reading her son's article about the difficulties he has faced in life, partly as a result of his childhood and upbringing, he writes back to her apologizing for hurting her, but suggesting that "I had meant to praise what I had lost" (189).
This reader has the same problem the author's
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