SOURCE: Henderson, Keith. “California Mix: Modern, Mexican, and Memories.” Christian Science Monitor 85, no. 16 (17 December 1992): 11.

In the following review of Days of Obligation, Henderson comments on Rodriguez's continuing quest for self-identification.

Richard Rodriguez's first book, Hunger of Memory, established him as one of the leading Hispanic writers in the United States. But watch how you use that word “Hispanic.” Rodriguez, whose new book is Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father, calls the term “a complete political fiction.”

Rodriguez prefers to be known as a Mexican-American, and his specific area of attention is the curious mix of cultural, religious, and political forces at work in his native California. In Days of Obligation, the author applies a literary microscope to such disparate, yet connected details of California life as the lovingly preserved 18th-century missions founded by Fr. Junípero Serra, the meticulous restoration of San Francisco's Victorian architecture...