Pieces of Words: Rodriguez's Identity as a Writer Anonymous 12th Grade

Richard Rodriguez attempts to write about learning to write in no unclear terms in his autobiography Hunger of Memory. Rodriguez constantly fluctuates between two extremes: the fear and dislike of writing due to its incredibly personal nature and the belief that writing is the most public form of expression. As he seeks to deal with his enormous uncertainty regarding his ideals of private and public, he attempts to do this through the lense of a writer. Rodriguez discusses the influence of his intimate Spanish-speaking home life on his literarily development through the process of his education. A constant juxtaposition of literature, home life, and his identity as a writer serve as pieces in a puzzle that Rodriguez tries desperately to put together. Though Rodriguez seeks desperately to discuss his personal and public life through the lense of his education, ultimately his baseline ambiguity regarding his most basic identity as a writer precludes a successfully clear description of any of the pieces of his life.

Rodriguez persistently insists that writing is the most isolated career path, as he must eloquently divulge what is most personal to him. Rodrigues asserts that he writes “of one life only”, his own (6). He views...