Here’s the exciting part: this afternoon, acclaimed author Luis J. Rodrigez will be speaking at Colton High School at the Whitmer auditorium. To get you prepared for this unique event, here are some facts and things you should know before the assembly.

Before that though let’s do a quick small backstory. Luis J. Rodriguez was born in El Paso, Texas in 1954, but he grew up in Watts and the east L.A. area. He was a gang member by the age of 12, but got out of the life and is now a famous writer. These are the basics.

Now, let’s get going with the more interesting stuff.

“Always Running” is an essential book.

Rodriguez has published 16 books in a variety of genres, but he is best known for “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.,” published in 1993. This year, freshmen classes at CHS read “Always Running” in their English classes, which is the reason Rodriguez is coming to speak. This book is about his life in an L.A. street gang, and received the Carl Sandburg Award. It also holds the distinction of being one of the most frequently banned and challenged books for inclusion in libraries.

Rodriguez was Los Angeles’ Poet Laureate.

According to Rodriguez’s website, he was named the City of Los Angeles’ poet laureate from 2014-2016. A poet laureate is a notable poet who is honored for their achievements and tasked with raising awareness and appreciation for the poetic arts. As poet laureate, Rodriguez wrote a poem called “Love Poem to Los Angeles.” In an interview with Rey M. Rodriguez in Sep. 2024, he said of the poem: “The city and library administrators wanted me to write a love letter to L.A., but I decided to do a love poem. It’s my love and hate of L.A. I mean, the city has a lot of things to criticize. Its history, and aspects like racism, classism, and police abuse, which are still here. But it’s also a city I love very much.”

Rodriguez and his wife opened a bookstore.

In 2003, after moving back to Los Angeles from Chicago, Rodriguez and his wife, Trini, were motivated by the lack of cultural venues for latinos and chicanos. “We decided to create one with the royalties from my books—instead of, say, buying a Lexus or a swimming pool,” he said in an interview with Cal Humanities in 2021. The bookstore, located in Sylmar, was named after his favorite aunt, Tia Chucha, whose creative spirit inspired him.

Luis J. Rodriguez also has a Mexika name.

If you know your history, you know that the Aztecs conquered most of central and southern Mexico starting in the 1500s. But what you probably don’t know is that they did not call themselves “Aztecs.” In fact, they called themselves “Mexicas,” from where we get the name “Mexican.” Rodriguez is very connected to his indigenous roots, and also goes by his Mexica name: Mixcoatl Itztlacuiloh.

Rodriguez’s first writing job was for the San Bernardino Sun.

From 1980-1982, Rodriguez worked the crime beat for local newspaper, the San Bernardino Sun. According to an article in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Aug. 2023, Rodriguez wrote about all sorts of local problems, including wildfires, accidents, and murders. He wrote about this period of his life in his memoir “It Calls You Back.” “When I got there,” Rodriguez wrote about working in San Bernardino, “the city had a hundred thousand people and the second-highest murder rate in the country.”