blueprints

60 | luis rodriguez
how most gangbangers do it, although it is often a long hard road—two
steps forward, one step back.
After three years, my first family broke up. I felt lost for a time until in
my mid-twenties I made a destiny-altering decision to quit my industrial
work and become a reporter/photographer at a weekly newspaper in East
L.A. I walked into the newspaper’s offices and asked for a writing job. The
editors said sure, but I also had to answer the phones, sweep the floors, and
take out the trash. I accepted, although the pay was several hundred dollars
a week less than in the steel mill.
I also signed up for writing and speech classes at East Los Angeles
Community College. And I later earned a certificate from Summer Program
for Minority Journalists at the University of California, Berkeley,
which opened the door to my first daily newspaper job in San Bernardino,
California.
In 1980, I began poetry workshops in the barrio and in prisons through
the L.A. Latino Writers Association. In 1982, I served as the director of
LALWA and editor of the literary arts magazine ChismeArte (Gossip Art). I
also freelanced for magazines and helped with community radio programming.
And I turned up at local poetry readings on the east side, eventually
ending up in the bigger Westside venues such as Beyond Baroque. In 1985,
when I moved to Chicago to edit and write, I also attended poetry events
in the burgeoning scene there. Later I worked as a typesetter and on weekends
as a writer/reporter at an all-news radio station.
i decided to create my own press,
publish my own book, and suffer the damages later.
All along, I was working on writing poems. By 1989—at age thirtyfive—I
decided to publish my first book of poetry. After sending my manuscript
to various publishers and contests, at a cost of a few hundred dollars,
the rejection notes piled up, my self-esteem fell to pieces, I had no book,
and I almost gave up on poetry altogether. But like many artists, especially
the “crazy” ones, I couldn’t stop. So I decided to create my own press, publish
my own book, and suffer the damages later.
Something my aunt would have done.