From Barrio to Bookstore: LA’s Former Poet Laureate on Survival and Storytelling

This story is part of The California Report Magazine’s series about resilient Californians, and what lessons they may have for the rest of us.

Luis Rodriguez grew up in South San Gabriel in Los Angeles County during the 1960s, in a largely Mexican immigrant neighborhood that he said embodies resilience.

He joined a gang at 11, was using heroin by 12, and was kicked out of his home by 15. But amidst the violence, addiction and housing insecurity, Rodriguez found a lifeline in books, and eventually became a celebrated writer, activist and L.A.’s poet laureate.

The American Library Association listed his 1993 memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. as one of the top banned books in the country. The book detailed how police brutality helped fuel gang culture, addressed drug use, explored sexual themes and traced the revolutionary ideals of the Chicano movement.

The memoir reflected Rodriguez’s drive to cultivate creative, empowering spaces — a vision he carried into his later work. In 2003, he founded Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar to create a space for arts, literacy and creative engagement.

He joined The California Report Magazine host Sasha Khokha for a conversation about how reading and writing helped him survive, breaking cycles of trauma and why, in the wake of violent raids and enforcement targeting L.A.’s immigrant communities, creativity is key to resilience.

Below are excerpts from their conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. For the full interview, listen to the audio linked at the top of this story.

On growing up voiceless:

When I first went to school, I couldn’t speak English … I uttered some Spanish words in the classroom and the teacher slapped me across the face in front of the class. That impacts a six-year-old kid tremendously.

I had nowhere to go with it. I didn’t talk to anybody about it.

It kept me voiceless for many, many years. I was a very shy — I would have to say a broken-down — kid. So self-contained, a very sensitive young man.

When we moved to South San Gabriel … it was one of the poorest neighborhoods in all of L.A. County. Dirt roads, no street lamps, little shacks surrounded by well-off white neighborhoods.

We were at war not just with poverty, but with a community that was watching us. The sheriff’s deputies — like an army — were used against us.

So that slap continued by other means: beaten by cops, harassed by teachers. And some of us joined a gang — I joined a gang at 11.

On living and dying for the neighborhood:

I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I never thought about what I was going to be. When you joined the barrio, the gang — we didn’t call it a gang — some of us dedicated everything for it. And that meant that we were going to live and die and if we had to, we were gonna kill for the neighborhood.

We were so tied into this web …. la vida loca [“the crazy life”]. It’s a web that holds you. But you’re not a fly in that web. You’re actually the spider. You’re putting yourself deeper and deeper in it.

Our sense was we were prepared to die if we had to. We were gonna die in a blaze of glory that, to us, was for the neighborhood, for the barrio.

On being kicked out and finding books:

I was 15 years old when my parents threw me out. I was already on drugs by 12, getting arrested, stealing, never coming home. I don’t blame them.

My mom would say, “Eres veneno,” you’re poison — “and I don’t want you to poison the rest of the family.”

But they didn’t know that I would love books … that I’d spend hours in the library. It opened up my imagination. It brought out that sensitive kid again.

Once you’re tough, I don’t think you lose that toughness. But you can get multidimensional. Emotional balance, emotional threads — that normally get denied. And I was getting back to some of that with those books.

On the library as salvation:

When I was homeless in the streets of L.A., my favorite refuge was the library. That was really a saving grace.

I started reading the books I couldn’t even get in schools. From Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler to Charlotte’s Web and Black Power books — Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, James Baldwin, Malcolm X — I ate all those books up.

There was a librarian — her name was Helene. She saw this rundown kid, saw that I was reading. She introduced me to a lot of books I wouldn’t have read. Librarians were open to a homeless Cholo and realized there’s a dream that could be made there in a world of nightmare.

On how he was arrested during the Chicano Moratorium, a series of protests against the Vietnam War:

They were gonna charge me for murder of three people during the so-called “East L.A. riots.”

The sheriff’s deputy said, “You guys started this, and three people died, you’re gonna be charged for this.”

In fact, all three people were killed by sheriff’s deputies or police, LAPD. The idea was, we were the impetus for them to attack the 30,000 people that had gathered against the Vietnam War in East L.A., the largest anti-war protest in a community of color at the time.

I saw terrible things. Deputies maced us in the bus while we were shackled. I saw one guy’s arm get broken. And I began to realize the power of the Chicano movement and how important it was.

Maybe I didn’t want to be fighting other barrios. Maybe I wanted to be a revolutionary, conscious soldier for change.

I was there for several days and nights. They’re not supposed to do more than 72 hours without being arraigned. [Then] they said, “Well, no charges, he’s out.”

I came in there as a gangster, and it politicized me.

On discovering his voice in a jail cell:

Somebody had a piece of paper and a pencil. Everybody was drawing or playing cards. I started to write.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just writing my thoughts.

I had read enough books … maybe I had a little bit of language. Some of the writings I did there ended up in two poems in my books. That was the first idea I had — maybe I could be a writer, not just a reader.

On fatherhood and generational healing:

Whatever I went through, I never wanted my kids to go through it. But I couldn’t keep my son away from the gang.

We were living in Chicago at the time, in Humboldt Park. Rough, gang-ridden. He joined in. I tried to pull him out — and I realized, that’s me at 15 years old running away. And he was reliving my life. So I decided to dedicate myself to helping him, just not leave him, unlike my parents.

I told him, “Mijo, we’re gonna go on this roller coaster through hell, you and me. I’m going with you.”

I stood by him through all his imprisonment. When I got clean — it’s been 32 years now — he did too. He got out of prison 14 or 15 years ago.

On collective change, shared struggle and resilience:

The only way to break through the madness that we’re going through right now is for us to see the commonality we have and begin to think about how we can empower ourselves to begin to run things to have governance with our agency, our own ideas and our own interests.

I think resiliency has to be centered around creativity more than anything, and it keeps you intact.

To me, resiliency is keeping intact in the midst of chaos, in the midst of fire, in the midst of a lot of pain, a lot of trauma, that you’re still intact.

And what keeps you intact as a human being is that you have an imagination and that it’s abundant.

It’s inexhaustible, this beautiful well that we carry. And then if we can keep that intact, anything’s possible.

On opening Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar:

We have a bookstore, but we also have a performance space. We also have workshop centers where we teach art, dance, theater, writing, painting, all kinds of things. And we also have an art gallery.

This is in a community of half a million people, which is about the size of Oakland — one of the largest Mexican and Central American communities in the U.S.

There [were] no bookstores, no movie houses, no cultural cafes, no art galleries. We created a space. We’re the only ones doing it. It’s like any of these barrio neighborhoods. You can get liquor stores everywhere. You can buy guns anywhere. You can buy drugs anywhere, but you can’t buy a book.

On what is happening with ICE raids in LA:

There have been many peaceful, disciplined and creative protests in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, often with music, dance, poetry and more.

Communities have used apps to track ICE presence in the communities to warn undocumented people to stay away, but to also provide protestors locations they can go to. We’ve had defense teams, and even teams to go door-to-door to find out who needs food, since many people are not even going shopping. People have stepped up to work food carts for those who can no longer work the streets.

On misconceptions he hopes to dispel about his community:

Mexicans and Central Americans have roots in this land as deep as anyone who has ever been here. We are not immigrants. We have the DNA of Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Inca, but also Purepecha, Raramuri, Yoeme, Zapoteco, Mixteco, Otomi, Pipil, Lenca and many more, all related to the Shoshone, Paiute, Lakota, Ojibwa, Cherokee, Cheyenne and more.

While we may also have Spanish/Iberian and African [ancestry] after more than 500 years of conquest, colonization [and] slavery, we are not “foreigners” or “strangers.” We all belong, borders or no borders. We need to reexamine and realign to the real origins and histories of Mexicans/Central Americans.