The Continuing Education of Richard Rodriguez

This particular post is about Rodriguez's first two books Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez and Days of Obligation: Arguments with My Mexican Father.
Though I don't agree with his argument in Hunger, Rodriguez is one of the writers who I admire the most and will read anything he writes.He considers topics like bilingual education and affirmative action which were controversial in the early 80s when this book came out and are still so today. Rodriguez was an aspiring academic researching his dissertation in the British Library when he has a crisis of conscience about the advantages that he received because of his heritage and ethnicity. So he abandons academia to inadvertently become a darling of conservatives since he opposes bilingual education and affirmative action, if class is not part of the equation. He can get carried away stylistically at times, but I think each book he writes is better than the last.
Hunger is collection of essays more than a sustained piece of writing.
Rodriguez's second book, Days is a better one than the first in my opinion. This has a larger focus as it covers Mexico, but still maintains his autobiographical frame.
Rodriguez also comes out as a gay man in this book, though he has always thought his sexuality was evident in his first book. Not to me it wasn't. Though he still opposes bilingual education and affirmative action, he has matured and realizes that American still has considerable issues with color, race, identity, and immigration among other topics.
Czar