March 1, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu
Major writer and Chicano political activist Luis Rodriguez, best known for his memoir of gang life Always Running, reads at UCSB Campbell Hall
Summary Facts:
- An Afternoon with Luis Rodriguez
- Rodriguez is best known for his 1993 memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.
- Rodriguez is also an award-winning author of poetry, novels, nonfiction and children’s literature
- He is also an activist responsible for founding groups that work with youth and starting literary arts organizations
- Monday, April 5
- 4 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- Free event
- Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
Writer and Chicano activist Luis Rodriguez, author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, memoir and children’s literature, will read from his work on Monday, April 5 at 4 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. This is a free event.
Rodriguez is best known for his highly acclaimed memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., which the Washington Post called “extraordinarily haunting and evocative,” while Gary Soto in The New York Times wrote, “Rodriguez’s account of his coming of age is vivid, raw, fierce and fearless....Here’s truth no television set, burning night and day, could ever begin to offer.” Rodriguez wrote the book as a cautionary tale for his then 15-year-old son Ramiro, who had joined a Chicago gang. Despite the memoir’s popularity among youth and teachers, the American Library Association in 1999 called Always Running one of the ten most censored books in the United States. Efforts to remove his books from public school libraries and reading lists have occurred in Illinois, Michigan, Texas, and more recently in California, where the battles were quite heated.
An accomplished poet, Luis Rodriguez is the author of three collections of poetry: Poems Across the Pavement, The Concrete River and Trochemoche. His poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award, a PEN/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and ForeWord Magazine’s Silver Book Award, among others. His books for children America Is Her Name and It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story are published in both English and Spanish. About his short story collection The Republic of East LA: Stories, author Sandra Cisneros wrote, “It’s rare to find a man who can write about heartbreak with such honesty, but this is Rodriguez at his finest, whether it is the heartbreak of love or the heartbreak of hard labor—the world rife with pain, the city and love, in all its beastliness and beauty.” Forthcoming in fall 2004 is Luis Rodriguez’s first novel Music of the Mill (Rayo Books/HarperCollins).
In addition to his career as a writer, Rodriguez has worked tirelessly as an activist, earning an “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” Award, presented by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Rodriguez has helped start a number of prominent organizations, such as Chicago’s Guild Complex, one of the largest literary arts organizations in the Midwest, and its publishing wing Tia Chucha Press. He is also one of the founders of Youth Struggling for Survival, a Chicago-based not-for-profit community group working with gang and non-gang youth. He helped start Rock A Mole (rhymes with guacamole) Productions, which produces music/arts festivals, CDs and film in Los Angeles. And he is a cofounder of Tia Chucha’s Café Cultural—a bookstore, coffee shop, performance space, art gallery and computer center in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.
Luis Rodriguez is also author of Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times, a relevant how-to that suggests concrete approaches to youth violence. His grassroots perspective enlightens the book, giving his writing both weight and an optimism rarely encountered in the literature of life on the streets.
For more information on Luis Rodriguez, see his website at www.luisjrodriguez.com.
While in Santa Barbara County, Luis Rodriguez will take part in an extensive residency organized by Arts & Lectures featuring workshops, assemblies and readings with local high school, junior high school and continuation students.
Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Luis Rodriguez will be available for purchase and signing at the event. They can also be purchased in advance online at www.bookstore.ucsb.edu by clicking on “General Books.”
Luis Rodriguez is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.