Final Reflection

Reading the memoir Always Running was a very touching experience.  Throughout the novel Rodriguez touched upon racial discrimination, riots, and just other fights that neither side won.  He showed a lot of courage in this book.  One specific moment when there was a huge riot and Rodriguez showed a lot of courage was on page 98.  “Go ahead puto, I said.  But make sure you kill me, or ill come after you.”  This was right after a riot when Rodriguez and other Mexicans had this white guy cornered and Rodriguez told him to leave to protect him, but the other guy stubbornly cursed him and punched him.  The Mexicans ended up on top of him, but Rodriguez told them to get off and he hit him himself.  The guy escaped then came back later with a gun.

The novel also introduced shocking hate crimes, sometimes done by the police.  A little bit before this confrontation, the real riot broke out.  “Two more cops arrived.  One put a choke hold on Carlitos as the other struck his legs.”(96)  The police are the bad guys in this book.  They are attacking an innocent man just for the fact that he was a Mexican.  This causes problems with the people around and bottles start getting thrown and the whole riot breaks out which lasts the whole day.

This was a very emotional novel and it is amazing how Rodriguez was able to come from this neighborhood to becoming an astounding Chicano poet.  It met all of my expectations and more.  I think that he had an unfair life and he deserves to be where he is now.  He has worked hard to defend his Mexican pride and to just stay out of trouble with others.  He was also very kind hearted to those who didn’t deserve to be treated nicely.  I really enjoyed reading this novel and the experience will have a lasting impact on me. 

To those of you that happen to come across my blog and happen to read it I do recommend this memoir to you.

Connections

Another work that relates to my memoir is the novel We Beat the Street.  This novel was about three young African Americans that grew up in South Orange.  They experienced gangs and many other horrible influences.  They were always close friends and grew up on the streets with no money to support their decisions.  These three boys were very intelligent people and they had high potential from the time they were born. 

One thing that relates to Always Running is that they were both caught with the wrong people at the wrong times and had to face charges for this horrible inconvenience.  There were a group of kids that one of the boys hung out with that weren’t the greatest kids to be around.  They were going to rob these drug dealers that they heard about or had seen before.  The confronted the men without taking out any weapons and just using threats towards them.  Before you knew it there was a moderate sized brawl on the corner between the boy’s friends and the drug dealers.  Soon enough the police arrived to investigate the situation.  One of the boys that he was with happened to have a knife on him so they all faced armed robbery and had to spend the night in jail, Thanksgiving night.

Literally the two works are similar because the two both associate gang life and success in the end.  Rodriguez had many things stopping him from being successful as did the three boys from the other work.  Rodriguez had to face racial discrimination, being a Chicano.  There were many riots and violent movements between races in both books except in Always Running it was between the Whites and the Mexicans.  They both became successful in the end of their novels, Rodriguez became a poet and the 3 men became doctors.

Figuratively the two novels were similar in that neither of them really experienced physical pain.  They were both involved in a few fights, but besides that they were mostly hurt psychologically.  Most of the pain they experienced was in their minds.  Rodriguez had to think about how he could overcome this gang life in LA.  The three boys had to focus on their grades and getting back on track to fulfill their dreams as doctors.  Both were successful in doing so and both are where they dreamed of being since they were children.

Title Significance

The title of this memoir Always Running has a significant meaning to it.  The title its self is a metaphor, there is a figurative meaning of the title and a literal one.  One of the literal meanings of the title was that he had to run from situations at times.  One time early in the memoir Rodriguez had said, “But TIno dropped the ball and ran.  I heard the deputies yell for Tino to stop.  One of them began climbing the fence.  I decided to take off too.”(36) This quote backs up my theory about him running from a situation that he managed to get himself into.  There were many times throughout his childhood where he was very scared and he always ran whenever he thought he would really be in trouble.  Another literal meaning of the title is that he felt like he was never fully protected.  He felt like he had to always be cautious about what he did, where he went, and who he associated himself with.

The figurative meanings of this title are a little bit more obvious and you have to do a lot less inferring.  One of the figurative meanings is that he was always scared and worried but he was not running all of the time.  Rodriguez had a tough childhood and never had the resources available to him that children in this generation always have handy.  He grew up a poor boy in Los Angeles and he had bad influences so he would have to stay away from these bad influences and not get involved with gangs.  While staying away from this dangerous and misbehaved society he referred to it as “Always Running”.  Another figurative meaning of  the title is that when hearing the title you think of physical enduring running.  In this case all of the running was done emotionally and he had t run from peer pressure around him.  He would always have these people around him whether he liked it or not, regardless he had to make the decision to not follow them and to be an individual.  That takes courage.  A quote that supports the fact that it was psychological rather than physical is “We were always afraid.  Always running.”  This is saying that they were experiencing fear constantly and they had to avoid it by making decisions.  Earlier in the passage Rodriguez says, “It never stopped, this running.”  He obviously wasn’t running forever, but in his mind he was.  All of the running was done with their minds, not with their feet.

Emotional Reaction

Always Running is a very interesting memoir so far.  It has met many of my expectations that I was hoping they would meet emotionally.  One part that really astonished me, and I mean had a great emotional impact on me was when Rodriguez said that the cops were targeting all of the boys who were at the field.  One cop had yelled some horribly vulgar words at him for moving even the slightest inch.  The reason that this had such a great impact on me is even though Rodriguez was a good kid and didn’t want to get involved with the gang warfare, he was found just as guilty as the others who were involved.  This taught him a serious lesson that even though you may not be doing what others around you are, if one person gets caught everyone else with them is held accountable for helping him get away with it.  The way that Rodriguez wrote the passage just was shocking and made me feel what he was going through at the time.

The real impact that this part of the novel had on me was the fact that he learns a valuable lesson from this.  At the time he was talking about how scared he was with the cops yelling in his face with their guns in their hands just torturing him.  That made me fear for what was going to happen to him even though I knew he was going to come out a better person.  The real reason I felt such a strong pull from this section in the memoir was that fact that despite having a gun put to your face and being held as a criminal, the only thing going through his mind wasn’t anger, but disappointment in him for involving himself with these delinquents. 

Passage Analysis

“It never stopped, this running.  We were constant prey, and the hunters soon became big blurs: the police, the gangs, the junkies, the dudes on Garvey Boulevard who took our money, all smudged into one.  Sometimes they were teachers who jumped on us Mexicans as if we were born with a hideous stain.  We were always afraid.  Always running.” (36)

Works Cited

Rodriguez, Luis J.. "Chapter 2." Always running: la vida loca, gang days in L.A.. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press ;, 1993. 36. Print.

Luis was always on the run whether it is from the police, gangs, or just people who are after them.  Luis had to do a lot of running in his life and was never able to stay in the same place for very long.  He and his friend Tino were trespassing on school grounds to play basketball on the court.  There was a sign that told them there was no trespassing allowed but they went anyway, and when the police showed up they left the ball and ran away.  This shows that Luis never had the opportunity to play freely; he would have to trespass in order to just play basketball.  He has a very difficult life and having fun is not a very big part of it.

In this memoir Luis Rodriguez is deprived of a lot of freedom that he deserves.  Nobody should have to always be afraid of their surroundings and have to worry about danger when just leaving home for a simple errand.  This passage is a metaphor, because they aren’t literally “Always Running” and they aren’t “Prey”, but they do have to be alert and move very often from place to place to avoid danger.  This quote tells the reader about how Luis viewed his life as a kid.  He was never comfortable with the community he was provided with and never had the satisfaction of feeling safe.

Initial Impressions

I am reading the memoir Always Running.  I am expecting this book to have an emotional impact on whoever reads this novel.  Luis Rodriguez grew up in eastern Los Angeles and wasn’t necessarily involved with the gang warfare, but the people around him that he knew and loved weren’t as fortunate as he was.  Some of his close friends were killed throughout his childhood and it took a lot of courage to pursue a career as a Chicano poet after having such a large struggle as a child.  He had a lot of bad influences around him and I am interested to read about how he reacted to all of this.  He witnessed shootings beatings and arrests throughout his life and still persevered in his society.  He wasn’t involved in crime which I’m sure was hard to do considering half of the city was.  His parents were immigrants and didn’t have much money so it was an even larger struggle to make it with his living conditions.  I am anticipating he was never able to escape poverty as a child and he was constantly moving due to his lack of money.  He probably had to make many decisions alone in order to protect himself and his family.  He was able to overcome all of the downsides of his childhood and make the best of it and made a living through education and his ability to put words together and have an impact on the people listening to him.  This memoir will be sad, but I look forward to seeing how he was able to escape gang societies and become an emotionally uplifting poet.