(born 1944) Vocal critic of affirmative action and bilingual education in the 1970s and 1980s.

Known for elegant, poetic prose, his autobiographical essays are widely used in college composition classes. His coming of age, Americanization apologia in Hunger of Memory (1982) solidified his status as cultural traitor for Chicanos/as and Left critics, but was praised by conservatives and mainstream critics for its courageous and painful reflections on Mexican cultural and Spanish language loss. In Days of Obligation (1992) and other essays Rodriguez intensifies his ironic complications of various cultural identities with his own queer sexual identification and sensibility.