Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

The award-winning and bestselling classic memoir about a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles now features a new introduction by the author.

 Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, hailed as a New York Times notable book, and read by hundreds of thousands, Always Running is the searing true story of one man's life in a Chicano gang--and his heroic struggle to free himself from its grip.

 By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests and then watched with increasing fear as gang life claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation.

 Achieving success as an award-winning poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more--until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants.

 At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.

Reason: Banned, Gang violence, drug use and sexual references

Author: Luis J. Rodriguez
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 10/04/2005
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.56lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.40w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780743276917

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.2
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 41129 / Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.

About the Author
The son of Mexican immigrants, Luis J. Rodriguez began writing in his early teens and has won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children's book writer, and critic. Currently working as a peacemaker among gangs, Rodriguez helped create Tia Chucha's Café & Centro Cultural, a multi-arts, multimedia cultural center in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.