summary/narration essay

Reading to learn Richard Rodriguez was born on July 31, 1944, in San Francisco, California, to Mexican immigrants Leopoldo and Victoria Moran Rodriguez. Rodriguez received degrees from both Stanford and Columbia University, he also did graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley and the Warburg Institute, London. Richard Rodriguez became nationally known after publishing his autobiography “Hunger of memory”. Rodriguez's essay, “The lonely, good company of books” was published in his autobiography “Hunger of memory” in 1982. Rodriguez's thesis in his essay, “The lonely, good company of book”, expresses his concerns for the pressures of reading in the education system. In the essay “The lonely, good company of books”, Rodriguez describes that as a little boy he had undergone a tough childhood, and had no friends or anybody he could find comfort from. He was from a poor Spanish speaking family, who resides in America. The family was barely able to put young Richard through school but the real story is how he developed a relationship with books. As quoted, “Don't write in your books” (Rodriguez 227), he heard it from his parents when they refer to it as viable income, or through the nuns at his school as they respected and cared for their literature. This he understood, but when it came to signs such as “Read to learn”, or “Consider books your best friends”, he found it difficult to cope with. Rodriguez found reading more of a central activity than leisure. It took one on one sessions, personally with the teacher so he can develop a better understanding. For six months he gradually processed communication between the reader and the writer through the books. Therefore, when he read, it started to respond to him on a more personal level. It got to the point that if he read a book and understood it, it was like a friend. If he read a book and did not understand it, he would avoid it. Rodriguez was praised by his teachers for reading books