When an author writes a successful memoir, it usually means they’ve said everything they have to say, but in the case of Luis J. Rodriguez, his latest offering is every bit as stunning, powerful and emotionally charged as his ground-breaking first book, “Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA.”
In the second installment of his memoirs, “It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing,” he exposes the stark underbelly of his life.
Where “Always Running” focused on the more public aspect of Rodriguez’s involvement in, and escape from gang life, and his struggle to save his oldest son from it, “It Calls You Back” plunges readers headfirst into the harsh realities of heroin addiction, jail time, revolutionary organizing, child abuse (his father abused Rodriguez’s younger sister) and—ultimately and most importantly—redemption and healing.
It is a truism that writing heals, but it still takes courage to write about hurt and pain, in part because writing about the pain brings it back all over again.
But Rodriguez has courage to spare.
His journey from the desperation of drugs and the alienation of prison to a life immersed in art and poetry and dedicated to community service is the best testament that culture heals—la cultura cura.
He describes his heartache when he failed to save his son Ramiro from the gang life that sent him to prison for over a decade. He even tackles what are perhaps the most difficult of all subjects: incest and child abuse, topics that are seldom mentioned in the Latino community and almost never in public.
In one of the most powerful and moving scenes in the book, Rodriguez calls his father, who is on his deathbed and unable to speak.
Rodriguez, who has been completely alienated by his father’s abuse, doesn’t know what to say to the man who brought him so much grief.
And then, after a moment passes, he says, “I love you, Dad.”
The way Rodriguez airs out these painful chapters of his family history is a testament to his strength as a writer, but what he writes also speaks to his strength as a human being and his capacity to forgive and love.
Rodriguez is deeply involved in gang violence intervention and keeping young people out of jail and prison. He has become a leading advocate of alternatives for young people—instead of jails, schools; instead of violence, art and poetry.
“It Calls You Back” is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know the intimate struggles and eventual redemption of one of the finest