In two collections of personal essays, Richard Rodriguez describes how becoming an American has been an experience much like Alice's trip through the looking glass. It has distanced him from his Mexican-born parents and separated him almost entirely from his Mexican roots. The central idea running through many of these thoughtful, earnest essays is a heightened awareness of the differences between our public and private lives. They also focus on the impact of education on …showed first 75 words of 591 total…

…showed last 75 words of 591 total…on my pages. I may force their words to stand between quotation marks. With every word, however, I change what was said only to me. "What is new with you?" My mother looks up from her ironing to ask me. (In recent years she has taken to calling me Mr. Secrets, because I tell her so little about my work in San Francisco—this book she must suspect I am writing.) Nothing much, I respond.