Hunger of Memory Reading Response

Mr. Giddings, I honestly don't know what to write...

Richard Rodriguez said in his work, Hunger of Memory, "Perhaps because I have always, accidentally, been a classmate to children of rich parents, I long ago came to assume my association with their world" (3). Rodriguez tells that he has always been around rich, privileged people since he was young. The beginning of his story even mentions wealthy places and things like Bel-Air cocktail parties, Belgravia dinner parties, tuxedos, New York, things that aren't common parts of a man's life with a lower social status than the wealthy. Even in his adult life, he is surrounded by rich people. He became "a comic victim of two cultures" (5).

Now, the two cultures he's split between is his Mexican culture that he was born and raised in, and the American culture that he had "assimilated" into. He had always been different from the people around him. In childhood, he's was isolated. Adulthood, he was welcomed. In childhood, he was intensely close with his family, with his Mexican culture. In his adult life, he became more familiar with the American ways and adapted to the culture.

His story seems to be about changing and fitting in, assimilation. The books he stole at the beginning of his story, could they by any chance be the classic volumes of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Lawrence that were later mentioned near the end of the passage? The idea of him "stealing" the American books can in a way represent him stealing a part of American culture. It wasn't his to begin with, but it looked like a really amazing thing to have, so he decided to get it some way, somehow. And by taking in to a new culture, he throws away his original one, which explains why he said that his parents were no longer his parents, but "in a cultural sense" (4).

I'm sorry Mr. Giddings...This is all I can think of...