Father

Rodriguez's father was orphaned at age eight and went to work as an apprentice for an uncle. He had a third-grade education, but when he was twenty, he left Mexico for the United States with the idea of becoming an engineer. He thought a priest would help him get the money for his education, but this didn't happen, and he ended up taking a "dark succession of warehouse, factory, and cannery jobs."

Rodriguez's father went to night school with his wife, but after a year or two he quit and waited for her outside on the school steps. When the children were born, he was working at a "clean job," first as a janitor for a department store, then as a dental technician, but Rodriguez remembers that his father was always consumed by fatigue. He laughed whenever his son complained about being tired from reading and studying; he...