Luis J. Rodriguez

Luis Rodriguez grew up in South Los Angeles in the 1960s. As a teenager, he was active in the Lomas gang, one of the largest Latino gangs in Los Angeles. In 1970, he and other gang members marched through East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War, and in the following years, he became active in the Chicano movement. While continuing many of his gang activities—including violence and heavy drug use—he organized student walk-outs and protests. At the age of eighteen, he decided to quit drugs and study political philosophy for the rest of his life. In the 1980s, he began working as a freelance journalist, covering topics as diverse as Chicago’s nascent Poetry Slam scene and the Contra War in Nicaragua. In 1993, he published his memoir Always Running. Since then, he’s written poetry, children’s books, novels, and a second memoir called It Calls You Back. In 1997, his son Ramiro (to whom Always Running is dedicated) was arrested and sentenced to eight years on three counts of attempted murder; however, he was released in 2010. In 2014, Rodriguez was named the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles.