Luis J. Rodriguez

The author of Always Running captures of the heart and soul of East LA in a collection of powerful stories about the working-class people who inhabit this run-down, colorful section of America's second largest city. (Story Collections)

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.

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. Rodríguez 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. Rodríguez’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, Martín Espada describes the poet as a man engaged in people and places: ""Luis Rodríguez 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.

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.

In a story of three generations of an American family who built their lives around a decaying, late-twentieth-century steel industry, thirty-year-old Azucena Salcido struggles with the cancer death of her father, the racial polarization of their community, and the corrupt power struggles among her neighbors, their employers, and their unions. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

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.

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 sueños modestos de los trabajadores dispuestos a arriesgar sus vidas en el calor feroz de la acería. Para los Salcidos, la acería de Nazareth se transformó en una maquina de supervivencia. Luis J. Rodriguez relata la evolución simultánea 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 sueños hace rato habían perdido su brillo. Abarcando seis décadas, la novela transmite el drama, la adaptabilidad y el humor en la vida de la clase obrera durante una época poco conocida en la historia americana.

"A los doce a os, Luis Rodr guez ya era un veterano de la guerra entre las pandillas de East Los Angeles. Atra do por una cultura pandillera aparentemente insuperable, fue testigo de un sinf n de balaceras, golpizas y arrestos y, m s tarde, con un miedo cada vez mayor, presenci c mo las drogas, los asesinatos, los suicidios y una delincuencia callejera carente de sentido cobraban la vida de amigos y familiares. Poco tiempo despu s, Rodr guez encontro la manera de dejar atr s la vida del barrio a trav s de la educaci n y el poder de las palabras. As pudo liberarse de a os de violencia y desesperaci n. Una vez alcanzado el xito como poeta chicano varias veces galardonado, Luis lleg a pensar que las calles ya no lo perseguir an, pero entonces su hijo ingres en una pandilla. Rodr guez luch por su hijo mediante el relato de su historia personal. La Vida Loca es una v vida cro nica que se adentra en las motivaciones de la vida de las pandillas y nos advierte de la muerte y la destrucci n 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 inspiraci n, esperanza y sabidur a, y una lecci n duramente aprendida para las nuevas generaciones.

A former L. A. gang member describes his experiences in that world, recounting the sense of security and power found in a gang and the grim reality of violence and poverty, in an updated edition of his award-winning memoir, which features a new introduction by the author. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Winner of the Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Concrete River’s poems illuminate the gritty idiosyncrasies of immigrant life in urban barrios spanning Los Angeles to Chicago to Harlem. Luis J. Rodríguez lends powerful voices to those struggling to keep the gas on, to find work, and to keep love. Populated by a vibrant cast of characters, ranging from the drugged, to the eccentric, to the heartbroken, Rodríguez’s poems protest capitalism, violence, and exploitation while reveling in the potential of compassion.