Location
San Fernando, CA
Website
www.luisjrodriguez.com
Luis Rodriguez: I am a voice in the dark, that dark place in America that we'd rather not acknowledge or understand. The barrio dark. The border dark. The criminal and drug-use dark. The peripheral dark of "minority" politics and working class dark. As writer - poetry, fiction, children's books, essay, memoir, journalism, screenplay - I have many genres from which to draw out the stories, the images, the meanings from this dark. America is too often idealized, whitewashed, scrubbed clean with lies. America has some great values, great ideals, but it's been built on some dark, painful, murderous history. I have to speak from that history. Not to destroy, not to dismiss, not to decry - but to dance. My name - Luis J. Rodriguez - is as much a part of American history and mystery as anyone else.
Which book did you first have published, and what was your initial reaction to finding out you would be publishing a book for the first time?
Luis Rodriguez: I actually published my first book "Poems across the Pavement" through my own publishing house in 1989. The press is called Tia Chucha Press. I started this press because I was having a hard time getting my work published. I had sent poems and other writing to contests, publishers and magazines - to no avail. I couldn't give up. After my book was published, with the help of a Chicago Cultural Affairs Grant, it won a book award from the Poetry Center of San Francisco State University. The press then helped launch the publishing careers of other poets in the Chicago area - such as David Hernandez, Patricia Smith, Michael and Rohan Preston. I managed to do many readings and even got designated as one of the "Next Generation" of writers during a World PEN Congress in Toronto and Montreal. A couple of years later, Curbstone Press out of Connecticut published my second book of poetry, "The Concrete River." Two years after that they came out with the hard-cover version of my most popular book, the memoir "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A."
After reading Always Running, you immediately became a significant influence in that a lot of what you had to say, in a way motivated a lot of what I try to do now. Especially when you wrote, "The more we know, the more we owe. This is a responsibility I take seriously. My hope in producing this work is that perhaps there's a thread to be found, a pattern or connection, a seed of apprehension herein, which can be of some use, no matter how slight, in helping to end the rising casualty count for the Ramiro's of this world, as more and more communities come under the death grip of what we called "The Crazy Life". What were your influences as a teenager or during the period when you first became interested and started writing?
Luis Rodriguez: I came across books by African American writers such as Malcolm X, Claude Brown, Julius Lester and Elridge Cleaver when I was in my teens. I was also enthralled with "Down These Mean Streets" by Puerto Rican writer Piri Thomas. These urban memoirs and autobiographies spoke about what I was living - gangs, drugs, jail, fear, loneliness, rage. I began to write vignettes of what I saw and heard in my own East LA-area neighborhood. I felt I had as much to say about America and our time as any of those other writers. Except for people like Ricardo Sanchez, Corky Gonzalez and Rudolfo Anaya, there were few Chicano writers at the time I could emulate. I had to forge my own way. These early outpourings served as the basis, more than 20 years later, for the memories and stories in "Always Running".
What are your thoughts on the public school system and their methods of educating children? How does it compare to when you were enrolled during your elementary, junior high and high school years? What recommendations would you have to offer in regards to how the public school system structures their ways of educating youth around the globe?
Luis Rodriguez: The public schools, especially in urban and rural poor communities, are destroying the spirit of teaching and spirit of learning necessary for any true education. Too many schools are caught in the throes of "standardized" testing, zero tolerance, large class sizes, "English Only," and tedium. The capacities, intelligences, creativity and natural learning that children bring into schools are quickly overlooked, ignored or "punished" out. The schools were particularly bad 45 years ago when I first entered school. Spanish was beaten out of us. We were taught the minimum required to work in a factory or service job. Many of us were "pushed" out of school early. Our histories, our stories, our interests were denied at every turn. But now, even with computers and advanced technology, we still miss the mark about true education - the process of drawing out the gifts, attributes and passions that all children are born with. Instead "knowledge" is being packed in, as if we were all empty vessels or clean slates with nothing to bring to the table. Making "productive citizens" of students is a detrimental goal of any educational program. While I've seen innovative programs, heroic teachers, and enlightened schools all over this country, far too many times there has been an undermining of an affirming and engaging educational environment.
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