Synopses & Reviews
An awardwinning writer delivers a major reckoning with religion, place, and sexuality in the aftermath of 9/11 Hailed in The Washington Post as one of the most eloquent and probing public intellectuals in America,” Richard Rodriguez now considers religious violence worldwide, growing public atheism in the West, and his own mortality.
Rodriguezs stylish new memoirthe first book in a decade from the Pulitzer Prize finalistmoves from Jerusalem to Silicon Valley, from Moses to Liberace, from Lance Armstrong to Mother Teresa. Rodriguez is a homosexual who writes with love of the religions of the desert that exclude him. He is a passionate, unorthodox Christian who is always mindful of his relationship to Judaism and Islam because of a shared belief in the God who revealed himself within an ecology of emptiness. And at the center of this book is a consideration of womentheir importance to Rodriguezs spiritual formation and their centrality to the future of the desert religions.
Only a mind as elastic and refined as Rodriguezs could bind these threads together into this wonderfully complex tapestry.
Review
Praise for
Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father “Days of Obligation looks into America—north and south of the Rio Grande—as penetratingly and eloquently as Camus did when he compared the mental landscapes of France and Algiers.”—David Lohrey, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The best American essayist, as far as Im concerned… [Rodriguez] doesnt kowtow to political correctness. He shuns the pack, rides alone. He writes a lonely line of individualism, the grandeur and grief of the American soul.”—Enrique Fernandez, The Village Voice
“It is like nothing I have ever read before, and the sheer dazzle of its suggestions says more about America than anything I have read since Lawrence.”—Pico Iyer, author of Falling Off the Map
“With Days of Obligation, Richard Rodriguez has nearly come full circle, right down to the prose, whose lyrical intensity stands in sharp contrast to Hunger of Memorys brittle minimalism. He is a dedicated stylist, turning arguments over and over, at times cynically detached, at others disarmingly revelatory about his own conflicts. The language expands and contracts, following the contours of alienation, love, and mourning. He writes with the enthusiasm of a younger writer exploring themes he once dismissed (he was so much older when he wrote Hunger, hes younger now).”—Ruben Martinez, Los Angeles Weekly
“A book of astonishing beauty… Here is a writer who can make words riot.”—Kathy Dobie, Vogue
Review
Praise for
Darling
“Richard Rodriguez may be the most empathic essayist in America….His sentences are reliable joys: liquid and casual, they slip in and out of philosophy and anecdote noiselessly, like people padding through an empty chapel, expecting to hear nothing more than the sound of their own passage.”—Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker
“With compassion and profundity of vision, Rodriguez offers a compelling view of modern spirituality that is as multifaceted as it is provocative.”—Kirkus (starred review)
“Engaging and readable, this highly personal and candid discovery…will delight Rodriguezs fans.”—Library Journal (starred review)
Praise for Brown: The Last Discovery of America
“It may be a while yet before America is as comfortable with the ambiguities of its complexion as Rodriguez is. In the meantime, he injects some desperately needed complexity into Americas thorniest debate.”—Mother Jones
“The recurrent strands of [Rodriguezs] though—family, religion, education, race, sex, California, America, Mexico—gain new resonance each time and stand, in the end, for the complexity of a whole greater than the sum of its parts.”—The New York Times Book Review
Praise for Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father
“Days of Obligation looks into America—north and south of the Rio Grande—as penetratingly and eloquently as Camus did when he compared the mental landscapes of France and Algiers.”—David Lohrey, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
“It is like nothing I have ever read before, and the sheer dazzle of its suggestions says more about America than anything I have read since Lawrence.”—Pico Iyer, author of Falling Off the Map
Synopsis
Rodriguez's acclaimed first book, Hunger of Memory raised a fierce controversy with its views on bilingualism and alternative action. Now, in a series of intelligent and candid essays, Rodriguez ranges over five centuries to consider the moral and spiritual landscapes of Mexico and the US and their impact on his soul.
About the Author
"The best American essayist."
-Village Voice Richard Rodriguez is the author of Hunger of Memory, Brown, and Days of Obligation. He is a fellow of New America Media. He was a long-time contributor to PBS and continues to write for Harper's Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in San Francisco.
Table of Contents
Days of Obligation Introduction: My Parent's Village
Chapter One: India
Chapter Two: Late Victorians
Chapter Three: Mexico's Children
Chapter Four: In Athens Once
Chapter Five: The Missions
Chapter Six: The Head of Joaquin Murrieta
Chapter Seven: Sand
Chapter Eight: Asians
Chapter Nine: The Latin American Novel
Chapter Ten: Nothing Lasts a Hundred Years