The article discusses four volumes of autobiographical essays published by Richard Rodriguez over three successive decades: his three "intellectual autobiographies," i.e., Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982), Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (1992), and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002), as well as his "spiritual autobiography," as the title Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013) openly indicates. The analysis focuses on the way in which the author's attitudes towards the issue of ethnic identity, the assimilation of immigrants, and his own cultural identity--or rather the literary representation of them found in the texts discussed--have evolved over time. Rodriguez's case provides an illustration of an evolution the very notion of assimilation has gone through in the American social context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]