A large part of Hunger of Memory explores Rodriguez’s early years and his path to becoming an adult. He is the third child in a family of middle-class Mexican immigrants living in Sacramento, with two sisters and one brother.

Rodriguez describes his childhood as "awkward," mainly due to the tension between his private family life and his public life outside the home. Before the age of seven, Spanish was the primary language spoken in his family. He felt uneasy answering questions in English during class and dreaded any conversation that went beyond simple words. However, after three nuns from his school asked his parents to speak only English with their children, his world started to expand. Rodriguez soon became less timid at school and grew "increasingly confident" in his public image.

While Rodriguez admits that learning English was crucial for his development, he regrets that speaking English at home reduced the family's closeness. The communication between him, his siblings, and their parents lessened, and the household became quieter. Over time, Rodriguez began to see his teachers as role models. Although he took pride in his academic achievements, he also felt guilty for becoming more distant from his parents. Additionally, he sometimes felt embarrassed by his parents' imperfect English, which added to his feelings of guilt.

Rodriguez believes that his education was vital in his transition to adulthood. Yet, he recognizes that this very education created a gap between his past and present identity. He no longer communicates with his parents as effortlessly as before, but he credits his education for helping him comprehend and express this internal conflict. Rodriguez states, "If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact."

Rodriguez proudly recounts his academic milestones, such as spending four years at Stanford University, earning a graduate degree from Columbia University, pursuing further studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and receiving a Fulbright Fellowship that enabled him to study John Milton at the British Museum in London.

Despite his impressive academic record, Rodriguez minimizes these achievements by describing his efforts as mere memorization. He acknowledges, "I had been submissive, willing to mimic my teachers, willing to re-form myself in order to become 'educated.'" As a "scholarship boy," he admits that much of his success stems from his memorization skills rather than a deep intellectual capacity. Nonetheless, he defends the teaching methods of the nuns in the Catholic schools he attended, arguing that students must first absorb established knowledge before they can engage in independent thinking and creativity.

From an early age, Rodriguez was keenly aware of his skin color and how it differentiated him from other kids in his mostly white neighborhood. He claims to have the darkest skin tone in his family. As a child, his aunts often applied different concoctions to his face in hopes of lightening his complexion, and his mother warned him against spending too much time in the sun to prevent his skin from getting even darker. She feared he might end up like "los pobres," the poor and powerless, or "los braceros," men who worked outdoors all day.

Rodriguez remembers encountering very few racial slurs during his childhood, and when he did, he was so taken aback that he couldn't respond. Nowadays, he is fascinated by the reactions his skin color prompts at high-end hotels or sophisticated cocktail parties. People often assume he has been on vacation or ask if he has thought about pursuing "high fashion modeling."

In his essay "Credo," Rodriguez...