"My Nature is Hunger" is the first poetry collection in five years by this major award-winning Latino author. It includes selections from his previous books, "Poems Across the Pavement," "The Concrete River," and "Trochemoche," and 26 new poems that reflect his increasingly global view, his hard-won spirituality, and his movement toward reconciliation with his family and his past.

Though Rodriguez is the most authentic voice of the barrio, many reviewers have commented on the universality of his work."

Hundreds of thousands of readers came to know Luis J. Rodriguez through his fearless classic, Always Running, which chronicled his early life as a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles. The long-awaited follow-up, It Calls You Back is the equally harrowing story of Rodriguez starting over, at age eighteen, after leaving...

The Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is the second largest community of Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States with 500,000 people. Yet, until 2001 the Northeast Valley had no trade bookstores, movie houses, art galleries, or decent cultural spaces. That year Tia Chucha s Centro Cultural opened its doors, first as a cultural cafe, which in ten years has provided workshops in music, visual arts, dance, theater, writing, and indigenous cosmology along with an art gallery, a poetry press, a youth empowerment project, and the only annual outdoor literacy and...

Tia Chucha Press started twenty-five years ago in Chicago with the publication of Luis J. Rodriguez s first book, "Poems Across the Pavement. "As founder/editor of the Press, Rodriguez has sincepublished more than fifty poetry collections of quality crosscultural U.S. poets, as well as anthologies, chapbooks, and a CD. Tia Chucha Press is now a project of Tia Chucha s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles, which Rodriguez helped create in 2001 with his wife Trini.

We are honored to announce the 25th Anniversary Edition of "Poems Across the...

Foreword by Martin Espada

This chapbook collection offers new poems from the prolific career of a community leader, activist, and healer. Luis J. Rodriguez s work asks profound questions of us as readers and fellow humans, such as, "If society cooperates, can we nurture the full / and healthy development of everyone?" In his introductory remarks, Martin Espada describes the poet as a man engaged in people and places: "Luis Rodriguez is a poet of many tongues, befitting a city of many tongues. He speaks English, Spanish, Hip Hop, the Blues, and cool jazz. He speaks in mad solos. He speaks...