Hunger of Memory is the story of a young Mexican-American boy who began his education in America knowing just fifty words of English and ended up achieving a wonderful education and attending Stanford University. It is a story of a minority student who acquires much social status and academic success, but at the same time loses intimacy with his family and ultimately his identity. Throughout his book he addresses many topics which he feels strongly about, such as bilingual education, affirmative action, his academic achievements and consequential losses.

Hunger of Memory is a book that I would not consider reading again, but it did address a few important issues that I think many people can relate to. Bilingual education is a subject that is still being discussed and debated today, and that I now have an opinion on after reading this book. Even though I agreed with his stand on bilingual education, I saw him contradict himself and this stand through the way he lived his life. He gained the public world, but lost his private life.

960s, a scheme was proposed by Hispanic-American social activists to permit non-English-speaking children to use their family language as the language of school (p11). Rodriguez could not see how such a program could benefit a child in this way. He believed that it would actually hinder their chances of achieving success in America, because he believed the key to success was a strong education and learning to read and write English (the public language). I agree with his reasoning because it is obvious that you must speak the language of a country to have the same opportunity to succeed as the natives of that land. I can more closely relate to this because I went to school speaking English, but yet I was still taught it there. The reason for this is that I was bei

Some topics in this essay:
Stanford University, Hunger Memory, Growing Mexican-American, bilingual education, Richard Rodriguez, hunger memory, private language, native language, intimacy family, , public world, lose intimacy, reading book, family’s private, throughout book, family’s private language,