Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times [Paperback]

Luis Rodriguez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1583225641 | ISBN-13: 978-1583225646 | Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Hearts and Hands deals with many of the difficult issues addressed in Luis Rodríguez’s memoir of gang life, Always Running, but with a focus on healing through community building. Empowered by his experiences as a peacemaker with gangs in Los Angeles and Chicago, Rodríguez offers a unique book of change. He makes concrete suggestions, shows how we can create nonviolent opportunities for youth today, and redirects kids into productive and satisfying lives. And he warns that we sacrifice community values for material gain when we incarcerate or marginalize people already on the edge of society. His interest in dissolving gang influence on black and latino kids is personal as well as societal; his son, to whom he dedicates Hearts and Hands, is currently serving a prison sentence for gang-related activity. With anecdotes, interviews, and time-tested guidelines, Hearts and Hands makes a powerful argument for building and supporting community life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rodriguez (Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.) here takes a long, hard look at the endemic violence and the "cultural malaise of isolation and meaninglessness" that he sees as defining swaths of U.S. culture. Combining personal memoir, perceptive sociological analysis and astute advice about political organizing, Rodriguez, whose youth included "drugs, jail, and gang warfare," writes movingly of how he turned his life around and dedicated himself to working with teens at risk. While attacking the image of teenage males as the primary instigators of violent behavior, Rodriguez focuses on the specific problems of young males "trying to negotiate their lives" in the face of enormous problems, with little in the way of adult models. (The group dynamics of gangs give members "the empowerment that other institutions including schools and families fail to provide.) Rodriguez urges the conscious creation of a "holy space" as a "temporary sustainable community" from which to fight violence. Always conscious of the role of poverty and behavior learned in prisons, Rodriguez warns of the persistent problem of adults overreacting to child violence, as when a five-year-old girl was arrested and fingerprinted "for allegedly `assaulting' a fifty-one-year-old school counselor." Never sentimentalizing or sensationalizing his materials, Rodriguez writes honestly and incisively from experience, knowledge and compassion.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Best known for his autobiographical account, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1993), LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ has written for the Nation, Grand Street, Los Angeles Weekly, and Americas Review, among others. Winner of a National Book Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for poetry, Rodríguez is also the founder of Tía Chucha Press, publishing emerging, socially conscious poets. He lives in San Fernando, Calif., with his wife, Trina, and their family.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Seven Stories Press (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583225641
• ISBN-13: 978-1583225646
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,269 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Crime & Criminals  > Gangs
  • #91 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Hispanic & Latino

More About the Author

The son of Mexican immigrants, Luis J. Rodriguez began writing in his early teens and has won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children's book writer, and critic. Currently working as a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level, Rodriguez helped create Tia Chucha's Café & Centro Cultural, a multiarts, multimedia cultural center in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, August 13, 2002

By 

Jonathan Stith Jr. (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hearts and Hands: Making Peace in a Violent Time (Hardcover)

This is a must read for youth workers who get (or need to get) the political and social justice context of their field. It was written by someone in the trenches and not the ivory tower of foundations, university or some nonprofits. It is well written and thought provoking.