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.

A guide to connecting with your ancestors and healing your lineage. Exploring the diverse and dynamic ancestral veneration rites of the ancient Mesoamericans as well as those practiced in contemporary curanderismo, Erika Buenaflor shows how we can draw from these traditions to reconnect with our ancestors, deepen our healing journeys, and shape our lives. She explains how ancestors contain a sacred energy that can continue in their direct physical heirs, be reborn in the landscape at sacred sites, or manifest in other beings that inhabited the same lands. She describes the deification process of esteemed ancestors and how this opens access to special powers for those sharing that ancestor’s lineage. Buenaflor examines the sacred offerings and ceremonies used to invoke, renew, and strengthen an ancestor’s soul energies, which in turn ensured their aid, guidance, and intervention, as well as their well-being and comfort in the afterlife. She shares numerous veneration rites and healing practices to strengthen your bonds with your ancestors, including limpia rites, ritual craft-making, trance journeys, shamanic breathwork, energy work with past and present lives, sacred gardening, and ancestral altar-making. She introduces you to nepantla spirituality, the path of reclaiming sacred liminal space, and shows how you can heal your ancestral lineage and reclaim your esteemed ancestors, those who anchor you with a feeling of belonging to something greater, divine, and beautiful. Whether you are able to create a long and detailed family tree or have no knowledge of your grandparents or even parents, this book offers many ways to connect with your spiritual forebears, heal your lineage, and receive spiritual aid as you reclaim your ancestors and welcome them into your life.

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.

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.

"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.