Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez
Published 1982 · 200 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Education & Reference, Essays & Criticism, Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction
How hard is Hunger of Memory to read?
Hunger of Memory scores 33 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 32 out of 100
- Literary vocabulary. Some Spanish terms.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Personal experience analyzed with intellectual rigor.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with personal and political reflection.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Thematic rather than strictly chronological.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Language as symbol of identity and loss.
- Ironic distance: 22 out of 100
- Self-critical examination of his own success.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The tension between cultures remains unresolved.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Six thematic essays forming an autobiography.
How Hunger of Memory is regarded
Hunger of Memory holds a literary regard score of 47 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.