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**Watch interview on the ABOUT page:  Self-titled "weird homie" joined a gang at age 11 before becoming an author.

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He has 15 books in all genres, including the best-selling memoir, "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." His latest memoir is the sequel, "It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing." His latest poetry book is "Borrowed Bones" from Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press. Luis is founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, now in its 30th year, and co-founder/president of Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley. He has traveled across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America, Europe, and Japan to speak, do poetry readings, indigenous ceremonies, or reportage over the past 40 years. Dedicated to his indigenous roots and Native American spirituality, Luis has a Mexika name: Welcome to the website of Luis J. Rodriguez. From 2014-2016, Luis served as the official Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. For Luis poetry is soul talk, a prophetic act, a powerful means to enlarge one's presence in the world.

Luis is also a novelist/memoirist/short story/children's book writer as well as a community & urban peace activist, mentor, healer, youth & arts advocate, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Mixcoatl Itztlacuiloh. With his wife Trini Tlazhoteotl he has a podcast called "The Hummingbird Cricket Hour"-- http://hchpodcast.libsyn.com/

Luis is dedicated to a clean, balanced, abundant, cooperative, healing world. No more capitalist private property relations, exploitation, war, or inequities. "In essential things, unity; in nonessential things, liberty. In all things compassion."

"I met a fella named Luis Rodriguez, a writer and a poet, who had a ... cultural center in Los Angeles. These are people I've known and worked with for a long time. These are the people trying to fill the holes that should long ago have been filled by government. Those are the people who give me optimism. They're relentlessly hopeful, and they face it all on the front lines on a daily basis."
--Bruce Springsteen from Rolling Stone magazine, November 15, 2007
For close to 40 years, Luis J. Rodriguez has been going to prisons, juvenile lockups, and jails to facilitate writing workshops, poetry readings, talks, and healing circles. Here is a short video by the Alliance for Traditional Arts of one of his 2018 classes in the high security prison at Lancaster, California.

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He has 15 books in all genres, including the best-selling memoir, "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." His latest memoir is the sequel, "It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing." His latest poetry book is "Borrowed Bones" from Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press.

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by Shel Silverstein

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Fashion

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Fashion

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"old souped-up cars"

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You do not have to answer the questions at the end, but you do need to scan the article . Read the last section, Big Screen Rebels, word for word.

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A Note from the Author p.2

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A Note from the Author p.1

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Have you found out how old she was when she wrote The Outsiders?

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This movie encapsulates some of the issues in the novel.