SOURCE: McNamara, Kevin R. “A Finer Grain: Richard Rodriguez's Days of Obligation.” Arizona Quarterly 53, no. 1 (spring 1997): 103–22.

In the following essay, McNamara discusses the various forms of cultural identity that Rodriguez describes in Days of Obligation, particularly the concept of double consciousness within San Francisco's homosexual community.

The Mexicans, become Chicanos, act as guides on the visit to El Alamo to laud the heroes of the American nation so valiantly massacred by their own ancestors. … History is full of ruse and cunning. But so are the Mexicans who have crossed the border clandestinely to come and work here.

—Jean Baudrillard, America

“Remember the Alamo,” children in Sacramento learned to say. Remembering what?

—Richard Rodriguez, Days of Obligation

I

When Richard Rodriguez personifies the United States in Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, he imagines a truck-stop waitress, “a blond or a redhead—not the same color...