This book is on the ALA's list of 100 most frequently banned books of 1990 through 2000.

This is a memoir of gang life & of growing up poor and Chicano in East LA in the '60's & 70's. It's also about learning who you are and finding ways out - through writing, through painting, & through social activism.

Rodriguez is primarily a poet and writer of short stories & it shows in this collection of snap shots of moments from his past. For those wanting a standard tale with a classical throughline and neat conclusions, this book will disappoint.

I enjoyed the author's imagery and the ways he plays with the genre of memoir. What is memory? What do we remember? How do we remember it? For me so much of my memory is just what he provides - little snapshots of moments in time.

From a political/social perspective, this book does a good job of elucidating the reasons kids join gangs and the possible paths out. He talks about gangs as a kind of mass suicide & that's an idea that stuck with me - all these kids looking for family & hating themselves.

In one of those funny moments where influences collide that can happen while reading, I kept thinking of another gang memoir that I read when I was younger. I remembered that it was written by a Puerto Rican guy that grew up in Spanish Harlem & was also about all of the ways that books saved him, but I couldn't remember the name of the book. It was right there on the tip of my tongue. I could remember that the author was named Piri, but that was all. Then I turned a page & there it was - Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas - turns out Luis Rodriguez read that one, too.

This book is also full of shades of Sandra Cisneros - a Chicana writer & poet whose work I've read off & on since her first book - The House on Mango Street. Like Cisneros, Rodriguez' work is full of rhythm & bright color.

I liked this book a great deal, although I don't think it offers any long-term solutions to these problems. Like The Corner, David Simon's killer tome on life on a Baltimore drug corner, this book illustrates the condition. Perhaps education really is the only way out, but to get there we're going to have to spend some money & stop using our educational system to ghettoize people based on class, race, income level, & the phase of the moon on Fridays when the cat's too tired to sing.

The world is a complex & beautiful place & in the end maybe only words can save us. ( )

adult situations (sex, language, violence); needs parental permission ( )

This book is about a guy that grows up in the ghetto east L.A. where he see's alot of violence, murder, gang fights and alot of things that a kid wouldn't normally see. He goes to sckoola nd themstarts to write poetry. He likes and is a very good writer. Then he tries to get out of the barrio because he knoes that if he stays he will get killed or locked up in jail. He does move. He has a baby boy that when he is a teen jumps into a gang and gets into a lot of trouble. ( )

This book is highly recommended. This personal account about the author's formative years in the Los Angeles barrios is extremely detailed and descriptive. His artful blend of English and Spanish words add flavor to the narrative.

His depiction of Los Angeles in the 60s, 70s and 80s serve to illustrate how much the city has changed, yet highlights where we still need to improve. The recent police action in early 2007 against protesters in MacArthur Park comes to mind... ( )

Lyrical prose captures the violence and trauma of East L.A. gang warfare. ( )