# Quote — Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory

> I was glad to get away from those students when I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study in London. I found myself in the British Museum, at first content, reading English Renaissance literature. But then came the crisis: the domed silence; the dusty pages of books all around me; the days accumulating in lists of obsequious footnotes; the wandering doubts about the value of scholarship. My year in Britain came to an end and I rushed to ‘come home.’ Then quickly discovered that I could not. Could not cast off the culture I had assumed. Living with my parents for the summer, I remained an academic—a kind of anthropologist in the family kitchen, searching for evidence of our ‘cultural ties’ as we ate dinner together.

- Author: [Richard Rodriguez](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez.md)
- Book: [Hunger of Memory](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/hunger-of-memory.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Rodriguez#Hunger_of_Memory:_The_Education_of_Richard_Rodriguez_(1982)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/hunger-of-memory/i-was-glad

## More from this book

> Of all the institutions in their lives, only the Catholic Church has seemed aware of the fact that my mother and father are thinkers—persons aware of the experience of their lives. Other institutions—the nation’s political parties, the industries of mass entertainment and communications, the companies that employed them—have all treated my parents with condescension.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/hunger-of-memory/of-all-the.md)

> An Hispanic-American writer tells me, ‘I will never give up my family language; I would as soon give up my soul.’ Thus he holds to his chest a skein of words, as though it were the source of his family ties. He credits to language what he should credit to family members. A convenient mistake. For as long as he holds on to words, he can ignore how much else has changed in his life.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/hunger-of-memory/an-hispanic-american-writer.md)

> If I ask questions about religion that my grandparents didn’t ask, it is not because I am intellectually advanced. I wonder about the existence of God because, unlike my grandparents, I live much of my day in a secular city where I do not measure the hours with the tolling bells of a church.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-rodriguez/hunger-of-memory/if-i-ask.md)