Richard Rodriguez, in his autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, writes about differences between and among individuals and families and other groups in the United States today. These differences are many and are based on race, gender, age, socioeconomics, generational conflicts, and politics. The author is not hopeful about overcoming these differences. He is a man who feels alienated from the world around him, although he is successful in it as a writer. He is a man who often seems to be angry and bitter over his upbringing and his education, and even his success:
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 greatest "differences" in the book, then, are the author's differences with himself., He is a man at war with himself, with his past, with his family, his readers, his success. It does not seem likely that he will come to form an "alliance" with himself over these differences. It almost seems as if these differences are what make him who he is.
However, the fact that the author wrote this book in the first place must be seen as a sign of hope that he might be able to do away with some of the differences he sees around him. If he had no hope about overcoming these differences, it does not seem that he would have written the book at all. At the same time, Rodriguez is not a dreamer. He does not paint a rosy picture of the United States with respect to the future. The differences he writes about are numerous and serious. He does not believe that all of them can be overcome, but perhaps he does believe that his book will reach some readers and change their hearts or even change public policy.
At the same time, there are differences which the author does seem to accept as beyond...