RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, is a Mexican-American writer born on this date, who became famous for his 1981 book, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, a narrative about his development as a literate, American student.

Rodriguez received a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.A. from Columbia University, was a Ph.D. candidate in English Renaissance literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and attended the Warburg Institute in London on a Fulbright fellowship.

A noted prose stylist, Rodriguez has worked as a teacher, international journalist, and educational consultant, in addition to writing, lecturing and appearing regularly on the PBS program, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, for which he received the 1997 George Foster Peabody Award. Rodriguez’s books include Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), a collection of autobiographical essays; Mexico’s Children (1990); Days of Obligation: An Argument With My Mexican Father (1992), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Brown: The Last Discovery of America. In addition, he has been published in The American Scholar, Change, College English, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, and Time. Rodriguez came out in his book of essays, Days of Obligation. This caused some readers and critics, especially Latinos, to be less willing to be critical of his ideas.