Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

• Position: Brief Article

Here is a beautifully written insider's account of what it's like to live in the desolation of America's urban ghettoes. The poet Luis J. Rodriguez grew up in Watts and East Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s. This is his autobiography, and it recounts the racism he and his family felt upon coming to the United States from Mexico. (They were treated, he said, "as if we were phlegm stuck in the collective throat of this country.") He tells how he and his older brother one day entered a white neighborhood and were immediately assaulted. "What do we got here? Spics to order - maybe with some beans?" the white kids said, and then pummeled Rodriguez's older brother, who "slid to the ground, like a rotten banana squeezed out of its peeling." Beset by prejudice and poverty, Rodriguez and his friends drifted into gangs for protection and self-respect. "It was something to belong to - something that was ours. We weren't in boy scouts, in sports teams, or camping grounds. . . . We wove something out of the threads of nothing." Rodriguez recounts his many run-ins with other gangs, with the police, with the schools. "I'd walk into the counselor's office for whatever reason and looks of disdain greeted me - one meant for a criminal, alien, to be feared. Already a thug. It was harder to defy this expectation than just accept it and fall into the trappings. It was a...