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Rodriguez is an essential writer in Los Angeles, the city’s former poet laureate. In this, his first memoir, he recounts the story of his becoming, beginning with his youthful involvement with drugs and gangs. That could have been a dead end, but for Rodriguez, art and literature became essential forces of salvation through which he was able to see, and then express, himself. Everything that has followed—among his other achievements, he is a cofounder of Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the northeast San Fernando Valley, an essential space for readings and for classes as well as a publisher of books—is emblematic of a deep commitment to literature and language as forces for good.
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