Writing La Vida Loca

Luis Rodriguez is a household name in some pockets of America, such as his native East L.A. He has published two poetry books and a critically acclaimed, award-winning gang memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1994).

Yet his popularity has remained underground. Where word of his memoir has spread, censors have fought to remove it from school libraries and reading lists. The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has called it one of the most challenged books of the 1990s. Next week, Rodriguez will be in town to read for Banned Books Week.

“The reason why this book got singled out is that it started to get very popular with youth, and teachers were bringing it into their reading lists, classes, and curriculum,” Rodriguez says. “Some people pounced on the graphic sexual and violent passages.” But Rodriguez had simply done what was necessary to reach the audience he needed to reach — first and foremost, his teenage son, who was becoming involved in a gang.

Rather than demonizing or glorifying gangs, Always Running makes a point to “look at our community, our society, as a whole — economically, politically, socially, culturally — and where we have fallen down. And it’s doing it from the point of view of a participant in that life.”

He notes the difficulty of trying to tell his son, “We gotta do something else so you won’t have to sacrifice your life to be valued in this world,” while advising him to be a good citizen in a culture that “doesn’t have a very good foundation.” So, Rodriguez says, “We’re talking about the vision for something else.”

He carries this difficult vision into two recent books for children, America Is Her Name and It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story. Both feature violent scenes — but again, Rodriguez says, “I was writing to kids who were seeing this stuff on a regular basis, and there was no book that could reflect that in their lives.” Ironically, Rodriguez’s children’s books haven’t been attacked in the same way as his memoir.

The genesis of Rodriguez’s own writing explains much about how he approaches his work. “I started writing poetry in jail when I was 16 years old. When I got out, I was still trying to do it at home.” When he showed his work to other people, “They gave me a sense I had something worthwhile to say. Then, as I grew more politicized, I was connected to a cause. It really helped transform my life from an isolated, angry, violent, confused young man into somebody who maybe had purpose and meaning and direction.”

In his mid-20s, Rodriguez began to reach back to those who were as isolated as he had been. He’s conducted writing workshops in prisons, homeless shelters, and juvenile facilities, and for migrant workers.

“Written expression is a basic need of people, and we don’t emphasize that, or we tend to belittle it,” he says. And too often, it’s suppressed altogether. That’s what Rodriguez wants to discuss during Banned Books Week. Because, as he says, “The capacity for poetry is within everybody.”