| Luis
Rodriguez is convinced that a writer can change the world. Indeed
it is through education and the power of words that Rodriguez
saw his own way out of poverty and despair in the barrio of
East LA and successfully broke free from the years of violence
and desperation he spent as an active gang member. Achieving
success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets
would haunt him no more — until his young son joined a
gang himself. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his
own story in the bestseller Always
Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., a vivid
memoir that explores the motivation of gang life and cautions
against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its
participants. Always
Running earned a Carl Sandburg Literary Award and was designated
a New York Times Notable Book; it has also been named
by the American Library Association as one of the nation’s
100 most censored books.
Rodriguez is also known
for helping start a number of prominent organizations —
such as Chicago’s Guild
Complex,, one of the largest literary arts organizations
in the Midwest; Rock a Mole (rhymes with guacamole) Productions
which produces music and art festivals, CDs and film; and Youth
Struggling for Survival, a Chicago-based non-profit community
group working with gang and non-gang youth. In addition, he
is one of the founders of the small poetry publishing house
Tia Chucha Press, as well as
Tia Chucha's Café & Centro Cultural—a bookstore,
coffee shop, art gallery, performance space, and workshop center
in Los Angeles.
An accomplished poet,
Luis Rodriguez is the author of several collections of poetry,
his latest being My
Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems 1989-2004 (Curbstone
Press). His poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award and a
PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award among others. His books for
children, America
Is Her Name and It
Doesn't Have To Be This Way: A Barrio Story, published in
both English and Spanish, have won several awards including
a Patterson Young Adult Book Award and a Parent’s Choice
Book Award. Luis Rodriguez is also the author of Hearts
and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times and a novel,
Music
of the Mill. Luis Rodriguez’s honors include a Lila
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Lannan
Fellowship for Poetry, a Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature,
a California Arts Council fellowship and several Illinois Arts
Council fellowships. He was one of 50 leaders worldwide selected
as “Unsung Heroes of Compassion,” presented by the
Dalai Lama.
Luis Rodriguez conducts
workshops, readings, and talks in prisons, juvenile detention
facilities, universities, public and private schools, and homeless
shelters. He addresses the complex but vital issues of race,
class, gender, and personal rage through dialogue, story, poetry,
and art. Rodriguez is currently working on a new memoir, to
be published by Simon & Schuster.
“ Art is the heart's
explosion on the world. There is probably no more powerful force
for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young
people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking
away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order. ”
— Luis Rodriguez
•••
“Never sentimentalizing
or sensationalizing his material, Rodriguez writes honestly
and incisively from experience, knowledge and compassion.”
— Publishers
Weekly |
