Always Running: Gang Days In L. A Summary

Many of us know the stereotypes of a gang member and what they're like. But, do we actually know what someone who has been in a gang actually gone through? I've recently read a memoir about Luis J. Rodriguez who has written about his life experiences while being in a gang and the impacts it created throughout his life in his book Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. He shows the economic influence of the youth that chose to turn to a life of gangs and violence. At age eleven, Rodriguez begins to be recruited and get involved in gangs, becomes a veteran of a gang warfare, drug abuse that led to overdoses, and bad habits he fought until age 56. He has had many ups and downs throughout his academic years of schooling. While being involved …show more content…
His father, Alfonso, was a principal in Mexico and his mother Maria Estela was the school secretary. His parents couldn't find a steady job to keep in the U.S, so that caused him and his family to move a lot due to the parents' instability. His mother seems to always find a place for them to stay or rest for a while. Rodriguez gives an example of when his mother found an empty bench at a park for them to sit and rest for a while until a Caucasian woman with her children came by and told his mother to remove herself and then tells her that this isn't her country and to go back to her home. As a child, Rodriguez felt discriminated and discouraged because of his ethnicity by the way he and his family were being treated; in his elementary year he was brushed aside for speaking Spanish and restrictions were set in schools such as they are not to be Mexican and to not even be a Spanish speaker. Eventually, he starts to feel alienated to the point where he begins to think that joining the gang culture was the only way he can be accepted in anything and felt that by being in a gang was the only way to gain the respect that he wanted. Just like Linda Darling-Hammond's article "Unequal Opportunity: Race and Education", there were discrimination in schools due to race and skin color which caused many schools to be more segregated and not letting students of a different race have the same academic