My Nature Is Hunger: New and Selected Poems: 1989–2004

Luis J. Rodríguez

Jun 2012 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

DIVDIVThe collected poems of one of America’s foremost balladeers of urban struggle and immigrant dreams/divDIV /divDIV/divDIVOver his three-decade career as a poet, novelist, and memoirist, Luis J. Rodríguez has earned acclaim for his remarkable ear for the voices of the city. My Nature Is Hunger represents the best of his lyrical work during his most prolific period as a poet, a time when he carefully documented the rarely heard voices of immigrants and the poor living on society’s margins. For Rodríguez’s subjects, the city is all-consuming, devouring lives, hopes, and the dreams of its citizens even as it flourishes with possibility. “Out of my severed body / the world has bloomed,” and out of Rodríguez’s stirring vision, so has beauty./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Luis J. Rodríguez including rare images from the author’s personal collection./divDIV /div/div

About the author

DIVLuis J. Rodríguez (b. 1954) is a poet, journalist, memoirist, and author of children’s books, short stories, and novels. His documentation of urban and Mexican immigrant life has made him one of the most prominent Chicano literary voices in the United States. Born in El Paso, Texas, to Mexican immigrant parents, Rodríguez grew up in Los Angeles, where in his teen yearshe joined a gang, lived on the streets, and became addicted to heroin. In his twenties, after turning his back on gang violence and drugs, Rodríguez began his career as a journalist and then award-winning poet, writing such books as the memoir Always Running (1993), and the poetry collections The Concrete River (1991), Poems Across the Pavement (1989), and Trochemoche (1998). He has also written the short story collection The Republic of East L.A. (2002). Rodríguez maintains an arts center, bookstore, and poetry press in L.A., where he continues writing and working to mediate gang violence.
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