The award-winning and bestselling classic memoir about a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles, now featuring a new introduction by the author.
Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, hailed as a "New York Times" notable book, and read by hundreds of thousands, "Always Running" is the searing true story of one man's life in a Chicano gang--and his heroic struggle to free himself from its grip.
By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests and then watched with increasing fear as gang life claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation.
Achieving success as an award-winning poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more--until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in "Always Running, " a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants.
At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, "Always Running" is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.

Luis Rodriguez, author of the award-winning and bestselling classic memoir "Always Running," chronicles his harrowing journey from a drugged-out gang member to one of the most revered figures in Chicano literature.
Hundreds of thousands of readers came to know Luis J. Rodriguez through his fearless classic, "Always Running," which chronicled his early life as a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles. The long-awaited follow-up, "It Calls You Back" is the equally harrowing story of Rodriguez starting over, at age eighteen, after leaving gang life--the only life he really knew.
The book opens with Rodriguez's final stint in jail as a teenager and follows his struggle to kick heroin, renounce his former life, and search for meaningful work. He describes with heartbreaking honesty his challenges as a father, and his difficulty leaving his rages and addictions completely behind. Even as he breaks with "la vida loca" and begins to discover success as a writer and an activist, Rodriguez finds that his past--the crimes, the drugs, the things he'd seen and done--has a way of calling him back.
When his oldest son is sent to prison for attempted murder, Rodriguez is forced to confront his shortcomings as a father, and to acknowledge how and why his own history is repeating itself, right before his eyes.
Deeply insightful and beautifully written, "It Calls You Back" is an odyssey through love, addiction, revolutions, and healing.

Make a Poem Cry is an anthology of poems from one of California's high-security prisons brought to us through the creative writing classes of Luis J. Rodriguez, sponsored by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. Rodriguez, who is Tia Chucha Press's founding editor, and formerly incarcerated writer Kenneth E. Hartman have selected work penned from 2016 to 2018. These are poems, essays, stories, and more mined from the depths of familial, racial, and economic violence. They are imaginings for how to address trouble and crime without punishment, dehumanization, and violence in return. Here's restorative/transformative justice in action. Here's redemption in the flesh. Here are voices and viewpoints needed for a just and equitable world for all. Funded by the Arts for Justice Fund, the project is part of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural's 'Trauma to Transformation Program.'

In a stunning literary achievement -- with a power and scope reminiscent of John Steinbeck -- Luis J. Rodriguez captures the soul of a community in this epic novel about love, family, workers' rights, industrial strife, and cultural dislocation

As the World War II cultural and industrial boom birthed a new California, a mighty steel industry rose with the potential to make modest dreams real for the workers willing to risk their lives in the mill's ferocious heat.

For the Salcidos, the Nazareth mill became an engine for survival. Luis J. Rodriguez chronicles the simultaneous evolutions of this American family and the enormous enterprise that drove them -- from optimistic and cohesive units questing for stability and prosperity to disintegrating entities whose dreams have long since lost their luster.

Spanning six decades, the novel conveys the drama, resilience, and humor of working-class life during a little-known era in American history.

Mientras el boom cultural e industrial de la Segunda Guerra Mundial dio a luz una nueva California, surgió a su vez una poderosa industria de acero, y con ella vino el potencial de cumplir los sueñ os modestos de los trabajadores dispuestos a arriesgar sus vidas en el calor feroz de la acerí a.

Para los Salcidos, la acerí a de Nazareth se transformó en una maquina de supervivencia. Luis J. Rodriguez relata la evolució n simultá nea de esta familia americana y la empresa enorme que los impulsó adelante— desde las unidades optimistas y cohesivas buscando estabilidad y prosperidad a las entidades desintegradas cuyos sueñ os hace rato habí an perdido su brillo.

Abarcando seis dé cadas, la novela transmite el drama, la adaptabilidad y el humor en la vida de la clase obrera durante una é poca poco conocida en la historia americana.

Over twenty-five years ago two Americans, Dr. Diana Frade and her husband, Episcopalian Bishop Leo Frade, founded Our Little Roses Home for Girls in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Until then abandoned girls were often given to prisoners since no such homes existed. Now Our Little Roses has some 60 rescued or orphaned girls in a city once considered the "murder capital of the world." Poverty and violence-especially in the past 25 years attributed to deported Los Angeles-based gangs-has affected the lives of all in the poorest Spanish-speaking country of the hemisphere. Unaccompanied youth from Honduras were among the 100,000 refugees, which also included children and youth from El Salvador and Guatemala, arriving to the United States between 2013 and 2015. American poet and Episcopalian priest Spencer Reece spent two years at Our Little Roses teaching poetry to girls who have lost family due to poverty, violence, and disasters like Hurricane Mitch that struck Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala in 1998, resulting in 22,000 people dead or missing, 2.7 million homeless, and $6 billion in damages. This book has essays by Reece and Luis J. Rodriguez as a backdrop to the girls' voices, and a foreword and afterword by poets Marie Howe and Richard Blanco. Luis and his wife Trini, a poet, teacher, and indigenous healer, also helped teach at Our Little Roses and the Holy Family Bilingual School inside a walled compound in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Here poetry and stories transcend the pain of loss that often goes unexpressed. Here poetry serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration in the shadows. Here poetry can save lives.

This chapbook collection offers new poems from the prolific career of a community leader, activist, and healer. Luis J. Rodriguez's work asks profound questions of us as readers and fellow humans, such as, ""If society cooperates, can we nurture the full / and healthy development of everyone?"" In his introductory remarks, Martin Espada describes the poet as a man engaged in people and places: ""Luis Rodriguez is a poet of many tongues, befitting a city of many tongues. He speaks English, Spanish, 'Hip Hop,' 'the Blues,' and 'cool jazz.' He speaks in 'mad solos.' He speaks in 'People's Sonnets.' He speaks in the language of protest. He speaks in the language of praise.

Ya sea en la comiquísima y filosofaclora voz de un chófer de limusina cuyo sueño es mejorar su grupo amateur de "rap-metal" en "Mi Carro, Mi Revolució", o en la diatriba en forma de monólogo de Ysela, una evangelista de carpa que da tes-ti-mo-nio en "Oiga", Rodríguez halla humor en las vidas de personajes que no están dispuestos a sacrificar sus sueños debido a las circunstancias que los rodean.

Rodríguez le da una voz elocuente al barrio donde pasó muchos años de su vida como padre, organizador y finalmente escritor: un vecindario que le ofrece al mundo más de lo que su apariencia sugiere.

Tia Chucha Press started twenty-five years ago in Chicago with the publication of Luis J. Rodriguez's first book, "Poems Across the Pavement. "As founder/editor of the Press, Rodriguez has sincepublished more than fifty poetry collections of quality crosscultural U.S. poets, as well as anthologies, chapbooks, and a CD. Tia Chucha Press is now a project of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, which Rodriguez helped create in 2001 with his wife Trini.

We are honored to announce the 25th Anniversary Edition of "Poems Across the Pavement"--close to twenty poems of an emerging poet that began a prolific writing career.

"A los doce anos, Luis Rodriguez ya era un veterano de la guerra entre las pandillas de East Los Angeles. Atraido por una cultura pandillera aparentemente insuperable, fue testigo de un sinfin de balaceras, golpizas y arrestos y, mas tarde, con un miedo cada vez mayor, presencio como las drogas, los asesinatos, los suicidios y una delincuencia callejera carente de sentido cobraban la vida de amigos y familiares.

Poco tiempo despues, Rodriguez encontro la manera de dejar atras la vida del barrio a traves de la educacion y el poder de las palabras. Asi pudo liberarse de anos de violencia y desesperacion. Una vez alcanzado el exito como poeta chicano varias veces galardonado, Luis llege a pensar que las calles ya no lo perseguirian, pero entonces su hijo ingreso en una pandilla. Rodriguez lucho por su hijo mediante el relato de su historia personal. "La Vida Loca" es una vivida croonica que se adentra en las motivaciones de la vida de las pandillas y nos advierte de la muerte y la destruccion que, tarde o temprano, se lleva la vida de sus participantes.

A ratos desgarradoramente triste y cruel, "La Vida Loca" es a la larga una historia verdadera, llena de inspiracion, esperanza y sabiduria, y una leccion duramente aprendida para las nuevas generaciones.