Here is the poignant journey is a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation -- from his past, his parents, his culture -- and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle class America.

Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, "Hunger Of Memory" is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.