Hunger of Memory is a memoir of the educational experience of Richard Rodriguez and his journey as a first generation Mexican- American citizen. The book is compiled of a prologue, in which he states his reasons for writing, and six chapters with no specific chronological order.
Richard Rodriguez grew up in a white, middle-class neighborhood and attended a Catholic school. He describes his early childhood as a war between his “public” and “private life”: a war between school and home. He struggled when he first started school, because English was his second language and he felt insecure about his shaky ability to communicate through it. He described Spanish, Espańol, as safe and endearing, while he described English as loud and impersonal. His teachers recognized his struggle with English and asked his parents to only speak it at home to help him learn. In time he became fluent in English at the cost of his Spanish, which his extended family loved to scold him for.
As Rodriguez became more advanced in English he became more self-conscience about how poor his parents were at it. With him not being able to speak Spanish and his parents struggling to speak English their family lost their ability to communicate the way they did
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His parents were both devoutly catholic; he went to a catholic school; he lived in a catholic neighborhood; he went to mass every week; and he had an entirely catholic extended family. He describes the differences between being a Mexican catholic and being a gringo catholic, he explains all the things that the Catholic Church taught him and he believes that it was the only place that recognized his parents’ intelligence. He is grateful for the way the church introduced him to all stages of life, including death, because it prepared him to take on the world. Rodriguez still attends church every Sunday, but he misses the way church used to be and dislikes the changes his church has