Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series to Host Essayist Richard Rodriguez Sept. 29

PITTSBURGH—Essayist Richard Rodriguez will give a free reading as part of the University of Pittsburgh Writing Program's Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series at 8:30 p.m. Sept. 29 in David Lawrence Auditorium, Room 121, in Oakland.

Rodriguez is known for writing about the intersection of his personal life with some of the great vexing issues of America. He published an intellectual autobiography titled Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (Bantam Books, 1983). Widely celebrated and criticized, this book today is read in many American high schools and colleges. In the book, Rodriguez describes his schooling and his opposition to such policies as bilingual education and affirmative action. The book has won several awards, including the Gold Medal for nonfiction from the Commonwealth Club of California, the Christopher Prize for Autobiography, and the Ansfeld-Wolf Prize for Civil Rights from the Cleveland Foundation.

Rodriguez, the son of Mexican immigrant parents, grew up in Sacramento, Calif. He earned the B. A. degree in English at Stanford University, the M. A. degree in philosophy at Columbia University, and the Ph. D. degree in Renaissance literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rodriguez's second book, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (Viking Press, 1992), is a "philosophical travel book" concerned with moral landscaping separating "Protestant America" and "Catholic Mexico." In the final book of his trilogy, Brown: The Last Discovery of America (Viking Press, 2002), Rodriguez undermines America's black and white notion of race and proposes the color brown for understanding the past and future of the Americas.

In addition to writing essays, Rodriguez worked for more than two decades for the Pacific News Service in San Francisco. He also has been a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and the Sunday "Opinion" section of the Los Angeles Times.

The Contemporary Writers Series is cosponsored by the Wyndham Garden Hotel-University Place, The Book Center, Film Studies Program, Composition Program, and the University of Pittsburgh Press.

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9/25/03/tmw