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Poems of the barrio and of the Americas beyond Spanish for "helter-skelter," Trochemoche begins by conjuring life in the barrio, whether in a slum in a Texas border town or in L.A., the vast, hectic, desperate California metropolis where Luis J. Rodríguez grew up. For Rodríguez, only art offered deliverance from the despair of gang violence and poverty, and these poems stand as prayers for transcendence, recorded long after Rodríguez escaped his violent past and began to explore the wider world. Here Rodríguez offers not only songs of the American dream, but a dream of the Americas, a place that invites a pell-mell, sometimes violent, collision of cultures, human impulses, and natural forces. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Luis J. Rodríguez including rare images from the author's personal collection.
Luis J. Rodríguez
Luis J. Rodríguez (b. 1954) is a poet, journalist, memoirist, and author of children’s books, short stories, and novels. His documentation of urban and Mexican immigrant life has made him one of the most prominent Chicano literary voices in the United States. Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrant parents, Rodríguez grew up in Los Angeles, where in his teen yearshe joined a gang, lived on the streets, and became addicted to heroin. In his twenties, after turning his back on gang violence and drugs, Rodríguez began his career as a journalist and then award-winning poet, writing such books as the memoir Always Running (1993), and the poetry collections The Concrete River (1991), Poems Across the Pavement(1989), and Trochemoche (1998). He has also written the short story collection The Republic of East L.A. (2002). Rodríguez maintains an arts center, bookstore, and poetry press in L.A., where he continues writing and working to mediate gang violence.
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