Always Running: La Vida Loca

          Luis J. Rodriguez's Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA is a raw, violent, and emotional account of growing up Chicano and poor in the shadows of one of America's most glamorous cities. What is perhaps the most unnerving part of Rodriguez's narrative is not the violence (which we expect after the title) nor is it the brutality, the cheapness of life and death, or the deprivation of urban American life-a theme that contemporary readers may very well be weary of, as even this "edgy" type of writing can fall into its own cliché-but rather lies in Rodriguez's frank vulnerability. He writes unnervingly about his own failures and failings: as a father, as a man, as an individual, with a stark and honest brutality that is both shocking and heartbreaking. In the 2005 preface to the new edition, Rodriguez writes:

"I was not a good father or a good son, but I learned. I was not a good poet, but I never stopped writing. I couldn't put two words together when I spoke, but now no one can shut me up. I had a hard time dealing with my addiction, my rages, but somehow, some way, I overcame them. The fact is I failed at everything I  tried to do but I kept working at it, failing some more, not giving up, so that eventually, at age 51, I've begun to center my life, get control over my destructive impulses, and become someone my wife, my kids, my grandchildren, and my community can learn from and respect."

          This is not a story about triumph; it is story about survival. But then again, perhaps surviving gang days in LA is its own triumph, complete with the honesty of failure and faltering. This is a story of loss and of deep grieving. Given all this, then, we may ask why this text is one of the most widely taught novels in Latin@ Literature. It is not just that Rodriguez gives us a vision of something simple, and true and unnerving, nor is it that he presents some universal narrative of triumph or of the human condition. Rather, it seems that this novel does something that is increasingly rare in our contemporary culture: it takes ownership. Rodriguez does not hide from the violence of his past; he does not make excuses for the way that violence ripples out beyond his own life. Instead, he creates a weapon of a novel, and asks his readers to take it up unflinchingly.
~Dr. Lorna L. Perez~