Luis J. Rodriguez
Luis J. Rodríguez (b. 1954) is a poet, journalist, memoirist, and author of children’s books, short stories, and novels. His documentation of urban and Mexican immigrant life has made him one of the most prominent Chicano literary voices in the United States. Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrant parents, Rodríguez grew up in Los Angeles, where in his teen years he joined a gang, lived on the streets, and became addicted to heroin. In his twenties, after turning his back on gang violence and drugs, Rodríguez began his career as a journalist and then award-winning poet, writing such books as the memoir Always Running (1993), and the poetry collections The Concrete River (1991), Poems Across the Pavement (1989), and Trochemoche (1998). He has also written the short story collection The Republic of East L.A. (2002). Rodríguez maintains an arts center, bookstore, and poetry press in L.A., where he continues writing and working to mediate gang violence.
“oh,you'll get over it... eventually-la payasa de lomas”
“Wich is the ultimate struggle, the one fight really worth fighting.”
“A la brava! understand?”
“Pegale,Pegale!”
“You 'will never belive it.”
“Yeah,we rate all right”
“It doesn't work that way”
“i'm sorry young man but the classes you chose are filled up.”
“cry, child, for those without tears have a grief which never ends.”
“they say of the poet and the madmn we all have a little”
“It never stopped, this running. We were constant prey, and the hunters soon became big blurs: the police, the gangs, the junkies, the dudes on Gaarvey Boulevard who took our money, all smudged into one. Sometimes they were teachers who jumped on us Mexicans as if we were born with a hiduous stain. we were always afraid. Always Running.”
“go ahead and kill us,we're already dead...”
“it is the violent peotry of the times written in the blood of the youth”
“you choolos have great storys about climing fences”
“there are choices you have to make not just once, but everytime they come up.”
“my task is to make you hear,to make you feel ,and ,above all,to make you see,that is all,and it is everything”
“you dont have solo rights to anything anymore,not even your crazy life”
“Vive La Vida LOCA (Live the crazy life)”
“You have a worth outside of a job, outside the "jacket" imposed on you since birth.”