SOURCE: Rivera, Tomás. “Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory as Humanistic Antithesis.” MELUS 11, no. 4 (winter 1984): 5–13.

In the following essay, Rivera explores the concept of divisional experiences in Hunger of Memory and the polarization between the Anglo-Saxon and Latino-American cultures.

[Editor's Note: Shortly before his untimely death, Tomás Rivera sent me the following essay. Except for minor typographical corrections, I have left the work, described by Chancellor Rivera as written from a “loose personal perspective,” as he wrote it. I wish to thank Rolando Hinojosa, Tomás Rivera's literary executor, for advice and permission to publish this essay here. M. P.]

Although I was born in Texas, had lived in many states in the Midwest and had not lived in any Spanish-speaking country, until then, my public voice as well as my private voice was Spanish through my first eleven years. It was in the fifth grade, that...