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Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.
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By age 12, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as that culture claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more - until his son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in this vivid memoir. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-learned lesson for the next generation.
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Audible Audiobook
Listening Length: 10 hours and 35 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
Audible.com Release Date: January 1, 2012
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Language: English, English
ASIN: B006S63K5W
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
Always Running is an engaging and intelligent look into the socio-political factors that have led to the proliferation of street gangs in the last century in areas where large percentages of citizens have few opportunities but plentiful obstacles, told through the firsthand experiences of former gang member and now activist, Luis Rodriguez, as he grows up as an oppressed minority in the over-policed, but under-protected, gang-haven of East LA. Though his story is fairly common—his parents moved from Mexico to LA to improve their lives and in spite of their best efforts weren’t able to protect their son from getting absorbed into the world of gangs surrounding him—it’s how he tells the story that makes this book unique and valuable. Rodriguez doesn’t romanticize the gang lifestyle of drugs, women, and crime the way that other writers might do. Rather, Rodriguez uses real human emotion and insight to explain the sheer horrors of this lifestyle in an attempt to deter any kids from wanting to live it.Though Always Running is a personal account of Rodriguez’s gang activity and later activism, it’s as much a historical account of the factors that led to the rise of gangs in LA in the 20th Century—and he blends the two perfectly. We see how those factors are similar to those that led Rodriguez to join a gang himself. He didn’t join because he wanted to do drugs, have power, and kill people, he joined because, if he didn’t, he’d be more vulnerable to being beaten, robbed, and/or killed growing up as an oppressed minority in a dangerous and chaotic world. A gang affiliation meant protection—but it also meant identity. Mexicans have long faced discrimination in this country, and many joined gangs as a way to celebrate their heritage of struggle. The book is filled with great quotes that explain this identity: “I’d walk into the counselor’s office for whatever reason and looks of distain greeted me—one meant for a criminal…It was harder to defy this expectation than just accept it…It was a jacket I could try to take off, but they kept putting it back on…So why not be proud? Why not be an outlaw? Why not make it our own?â€Though the book exposes a lot of ugliness, one of the major themes Rodriguez explores is his pride in Chicano heritage, and how this pride eventually inspired him to give up the gang lifestyle. When he’s able to explore his identity in more positive ways, such as through joining Chicano pride groups, painting murals, and writing about his experiences, Rodriguez slowly starts to leave the gang lifestyle behind, and in doing so, he begins to see through its shallowness and pointlessness. Though it may give kids protection and a feeling of pride, he shows how those doing the “protecting†may be the very people who you need protection from when you question their lifestyle and how silly their pride is when it comes at the expense of selling your own soul. Luckily for Rodriguez, he was able to escape this lifestyle, which is not something many of his friends could say. Death is always around every corner, and every turn of the page, and so few kids like Rodriguez are able to live long enough to see through this lifestyle and develop into productive members of society.One of the most valuable parts of this book is its socio-political message about the horrible affects the oppression of minorities has on a society, and this message is as current and poignant today as it was when the book was written. Rodriguez explains how systemic racism was used throughout the history of LA to keep certain minority groups poor, disenfranchised, and controlled by their oppressors, and how this not only hurts the minority groups, but also hurts the oppressors. Society creates gangs then lives in fear of being attacked by them and police brutality results. It’s impossible today to turn on the news and avoid stories of policemen and women harassing, intimidating, assaulting, and sometimes, killing, specific demographics of US citizens for no other reason than their skin color, religious affiliation, national origins… This books is filled with so many examples of horrific crimes committed by police officers that it's hard not to be outraged. Granted, most of these crimes were committed against gang members, but these gang members were mostly misguided kids, and the cops, who are adults who’ve sworn to protect and defend US citizens, oftentimes cause more violence and crime than the gang members. Again, Rodriguez has a lot of great quotes to explain this: “In the barrio, the police are just another gang…Shootings, assaults and skirmishes between the barrios are direct results of police activity. Even drug dealing. I know this. Everybody knows this.†Quotes like this show why the Black Lives Matter movement is so important, and how it didn’t just emerge out of some bubble—the problem has always been here, and the more that people read books like Always Running, the better chances we have as a society to address it.Part poetic personal story, part engaging historical lesson, part inspiration tale of redemption, part exultation of Chicano heritage, part poignant work of socio-political activism, Always Running is a multifaceted book dripping with live-in human experience and emotion, and I highly recommend it to everyone who cares about improving the world they live in.
I decided to use this novel in my 10th grade ELA classes this year. I teach in a low-income, urban community, that is plagued by constant gang violence and drug abuse. Despite this, my students remain resilient and eager to change the narrative that surrounds their community. Luis' story is raw and inspiring. As it chronicles his life from a child to a young-adult, my students have been able to understand how Luis ends up on the path he heads down and also how he is able to remove himself from that path. It has been truly amazing to see my students' reactions to reading this story.I am very eager to have Luis visit our school and speak with my students. Unfortunately, my school cannot afford the agent's fee, so if anyone knows of any way please let me know!
This book was much less riveting than I thought it would be. Having said that, I do think it's an important book that our youth should be exposed to IN SCHOOL and AT HOME, because it seems to portray the very high price - in many cases, the ultimate price - that kids pay when they engage in gang activities. I totally fail to see why this book was banned from schools. Are they denying the reality of what kids these days are actually living? These kids need facts and information, and this first-hand account from the front lines of gangs in L.A. provides exactly that, and minces no words in doing it. Maybe that's why all the politcally-correct school boards, teachers, principals, or whoever banned this book from various schools, including one right here in my home state of Michigan, in Kalamazoo. Ridiculous. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending this kind of stuff doesn't exist DOES NOT HELP THE KIDS, OR THEIR PARENTS, it just makes the ignorance about how dangerous gangs are grow and fester, to the detriment of, once again, the kids. So, while this book was not the "riveting read" that I expected, it was extremely educational (even for me, and I'm in my 60's) and I would say it should be taught as a course in high school. The more kids know, the better they can defend themselves against the seductive lure of the gangs. And one thing reading this book as a family WILL do is, it will start a dialogue between parents and their children, a dialogue that could save the kid's life. So, three stars for the book, but five stars for the educational content that I feel every kid - and his/her parents - has a right to be exposed to.
What’s crazy about this book is that so much of this was eerily similar to events that happened much more recently: What happened in Baltimore and Ferguson, to name just two. Unfortunately, stories of police brutality disproportionately being inflicted on people with brown and black skin hasn’t changed much since what Luis Rodriguez experienced in his youth.One thing I didn’t like about this book was that he jumped around time-wise for reasons that weren’t clear to me. He’d talk about stuff that happened in 1970 and then suddenly we’re back in 1968, back and forth. Sometimes he’d be talking about being 15 and suddenly we’re talking about events that happened when he was 9. There were lots of characters, too. These two things meant it wasn’t always easy to follow the narrative.My favorite part of the book was when he and a Chicano girl tried out to become the school mascots Joe and Josephine Aztec because their community was tired of Anglo students filling the role and making the characters look like bumbling morons. Luis and Esme do an authentic Aztec dance in authentic Aztec dress. It was a part of building community pride and the scene made me tear up.His story of the violence and prejudice and poverty he was subjected to meant joining what they called “clubs†and the media called “gangs†for protection seem like a logical thing to do. That he got out alive and became a published writer is the surprising part of the story.
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