In the prologue, Rodriguez introduces himself and his book, referring to it as "essays impersonating an autobiography; six chapters of sad, fuguelike repetition." He makes clear that his purpose in putting together the book was to write about how education moved him from boyhood to manhood.
In this essay, Rodriguez focuses on how the use of language has marked the difference between his public life and his private life. When he was a young child, he spoke primarily Spanish. Spanish was the comfortable language of his home life, while English was the language he heard spoken by strangers outside the home.
Soon after Rodriguez starts attending a Catholic elementary school, the family receives a visit from his teachers, concerned about Rodriguez's poor performance and his siblings' academic achievement. The teachers ask his parents to speak only English in the home. This event changes everything, according to Rodriguez, including how he feels at home with his parents. At first he is frustrated with speaking only English, but the day finally comes when he feels comfortable enough with English to answer a question in class. "The belief, the calming assurance that I belonged in public, had at last taken hold," he remembers.
Though Rodriguez feels that he lost something when he and his family became increasingly Americanized, he stresses that there were also things gained. Two of the most critical were "a public identity" and maturity. For this reason, he does not agree with bilingual education proponents who argue that children not taught in their native languages lose their "individuality." He also does not believe that these "bilingualists" understand the necessity and value of assimilation.
In this essay, Rodriguez reminisces about his education and the impact it has had on his life. He claims that his success in life is based on how education changed him and separated him from the life he had "before becoming a student."
Throughout this essay, Rodriguez refers to Richard Hogart's book The Uses of Literacy, in which he discovered one of the few mentions of the "scholarship boy" by educational theorists. Rodriguez sees himself in Hogart's descriptions of the scholarship boy, and this has helped him understand his experiences.
Rodriguez expresses concern that he was the type of student who, while making good grades, simply memorized information and never developed his own opinions. Like the "scholarship boy," Rodriguez worked for academic success and denied his past. And also like the "scholarship boy," Rodriguez experienced nostalgia for his past. But he notes that while education created a gulf between him and his parents, education also made it possible to care about that fact and to write about it.
Paralleling Rodriguez's education were the increasingly contrary feelings he developed toward his parents. While he did not mean to be rude and hurtful toward them, he found himself becoming angry when they did not seem to be as capable as his teachers. More and more as a student, Rodriguez looked toward his teachers, and not his parents, as role models.
Rodriguez remembers his parents' experiences with education and work. His mother received a high school degree even though, he says, her English was poor. She went to night school, worked as a typist, and was very proud of her excellent spelling ability. His father moved to the United States as a young man, seeking a better life as an engineer. That dream never materialized, and his father worked at a series of unsatisfying low-end jobs that, nonetheless, kept the family comfortable.
In "Credo," Rodriguez discusses his relationship with the Catholic Church. He remembers that Catholicism "shaped my whole day. It framed my experience of eating and sleeping and washing; it named the season and the hour." Before Rodriguez left home to attend Stanford University, he and his family attended Mass every Sunday and on feast days. The first English-speaking guest at their house was their local priest.
Rodriguez remembers how the Church dominated his education. The nuns' teaching through memorization, while discouraging "intellectual challenges to authority," encouraged learning as a rite of passage. He fondly recalls becoming an altar boy and how this role introduced him to the rituals of life and death.
Rodriguez discusses his current views of the Church. He still goes to Mass each Sunday but is not particularly pleased with the changes the Church has made beginning with the reforms of the 1960s.
Rodriguez examines how his dark complexion has defined certain parts of his life. Today he notices, when he walks into a hotel, he is often asked if he has been on vacation. But his mother saw dark skin as a symbol of poverty, and he remembers her admonitions to him to stay out of the sun to keep from tanning, lest he be mistaken for a menial worker.
His mother also worried whether it was appropriate for Rodriguez to mow their neighbors' lawns and was adamant that her daughter not wear a uniform while she worked briefly as a housekeeper for a wealthy woman. But Rodriguez's father was mostly concerned that Rodriguez not get stuck in a factory job that would wear him down and make him a tired middle-aged man like himself.
Rodriguez was never concerned that the darkness of his skin made him subject to racism when he was young but remembers feeling that it made him ugly, especially to women. He tried to distance himself from his body, for example, by never participating in sports as a child.
While Rodriguez was attending Stanford University, a friend hesitantly suggested that he consider a summer construction job. Rodriguez accepted it, in part to show his father that he knew about "real work." Surprisingly, Rodriguez enjoyed the work, but he also realized that his short time in the job prohibited him from completely understanding the nature of physical labor.
In this essay, Rodriguez questions affirmative action and his role as a "minority student," a term he feels should never have been "foisted" upon him and one he should not have accepted. He believes that black civil rights leaders in the 1960s were correct in their argument that higher education was not accessible to blacks. However, he also believes that they "tragically limited the impact of their movement" when they focused on race as the only factor in lack of educational access. According to Rodriguez, social class, and not race or ethnicity, is the key indicator for oppression.
The very fact that Rodriguez was a well-educated student, he asserts, made him not a minority. "I was not—in a cultural sense—a minority, an alien from public life," he writes. In the 1970s, Rodriguez began publishing articles stating his discomfort at being a beneficiary of affirmative action. In response, he received many approving letters from "right-wing politicians" and angry reactions from minority activists. He avoided allying himself with either side.
Rodriguez also addresses the establishment of ethnic studies programs in the 1970s and dismisses these programs as being based on "romantic hopes." He expresses disdain for white students who described themselves as oppressed and complained that minorities were taking their seats in postgraduate professional programs.
Because Rodriguez was uncomfortable with his minority status and the benefits he received through affirmative action, he avoided accepting a permanent teaching position at any of the prestigious schools knocking on his door. He felt he did not deserve the amount of attention he was getting and blamed the situation on the unfair application of affirmative action. Eventually, he refused all of the offers, angering his professors and confusing his parents.
In the final essay, Rodriguez addresses his ambivalent feelings about writing this "intellectual autobiography." When Rodriguez had earlier published a short autobiographical piece, his mother was horrified that he had revealed to the public, specifically to gringos, that his education had created divisions between him and his parents.
Rodriguez remembers growing up in an atmosphere where even the smallest bit of family information was considered inappropriate for outsiders' ears. But now, unlike his parents, he believes that there is a place for the "deeply personal in public life."