Here, Richard Rodriguez reflects on his life—from his beginnings as the child of a second-generation, middle-class, Mexican-American family to becoming the esteemed writer and public intellectual that he is today. Rodriguez notes how the dark color of his skin immediately marks him as an outsider, albeit an exotic one. People tell him he should model, and assume he is part of the upper-class world of the rich, a guest at their parties. He is in demand as a speaker about education, giving speeches at colleges and in ballrooms. He is most known for his essays arguing against two popular education theories of the mid-1980s: bilingual education and affirmative action. Rodriguez writes that he has become a prominent member of “America’s Ethnic Left” (3).

Rodriguez establishes his reason for producing a memoir: “I write this autobiography as the history of my schooling. To admit the change in my life I must speak of years as a student, of losses, of gains” (4). Rodriguez writes that he considers his memoir to be a pastoral, a popular subgenre within the Romantic movement, in which writers and artists glorified the concerns and daily life of the lower classes, such as peasants and shepherds.