Spotlight on Luis Rodriguez
By the time I interviewed Luis Rodriguez, I was entering the home stretch of completing A-Z Latino Writers and Journalists. I had probably interviewed about fifty people and wasn't so nervous anymore. Then you do the research on a guy like Luis Rodriguez and the jitters come back. Luis lived a tough life on the streets of East Los Angeles. He was in a gang, in jail, and he wasn't afraid to tell the truth of his experience. Well, as someone just out of her pocha suit, I wasn't sure how much edginess I could take. Honestly, I was thinking this was the thing that grandpy was afraid I'd see and so he assimilated and kept it all far from me. Who was I to enter the deep, dark cave of what it means to really grow up Hispanic, Latino, Mexican, to experience Life in El Barrio? You know what though? Luis makes it accessible, he makes it real, and he create a picture that not only can you imagine and empathize with, you find yourself opening like a lotus flower, deepening to levels of humanity you didn't know where there before. And then suddenly Luis doesn't look like a hardened criminal who faced time and has a rant to shock your socks off, but more like a teddy bear, who just wants to share his story and keep kids off the streets. http://www.tiachucha.com/ http://www.luisjrodriguez.com/



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