Overview

Luis Rodrguez is a prominent Latinx poet, memoirist and activist renowned for his candid visceral accounts of urban working-class life that includes youth gang violence, incarceration and drug abuse, gruelling factory work and union organising activities and collective approaches to redemption and political empowerment, which have resonated across multiple communities in the United States and abroad. Accordingly, whilst Rodrguez has been the focus of some critical scholarship, huge segments of his life, work and legacy remain unexamined. This anthology has commissioned new and unique critical essays and reflections on Rodrguez's life and works, putting forward new ideas about bringing the voices of 'barrio organic intellectuals' to the fore. The anthology deliberately includes traditional academics as well as more public intellectuals and creative writers from across Europe and the Americas to reflect Rodriguez's own diverse outputs as a prisoner author and activist.

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9781399520591

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In the tradition of Antonio Gramsci, this collection of multiple scholarly and literary essays reveal Luis J. Rodríguez's body of work and activism as that of a Chicano 'organic intellectual' challenging the US's political, cultural and material hegemony. His work offers a playbook for how to engage in resistance in these troubled times.--Avelardo Valdez, University of Southern California The Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodríguez: In the Long Run is the most comprehensive overview, critical assessment and sustained study of the renowned former gang member, pinto author, barrio intellectual and critical humanist-philosopher. It encompasses perspectives that account for the significance of his literary impact, his praxis-oriented politics, critical reflections on him by people who've known Luis for decades, analysis of the transformation of his once hyper masculinist worldview, pedagogical approaches to Rodriguez's life story and prison literature, his impact as a publisher, and original new work. In the depth and range of critical perspectives included here, Metcalf and Olguín make a major contribution and set a new standard for US literary history and author studies, community studies and intellectual biographies.--Louis Mendoza, Arizona State University

Author Information

Josephine Metcalf is a Senior Lecturer in American Studies and Criminology at the University of Hull, UK where she is the co-founder and co-director of the Cultures of Incarceration Centre. Her research focuses on the representation of prisons and street gangs in literature and other pop-culture forms and the ways these have been received by audiences. She has published on prison memoirs by authors such as Stanley Tookie Williams and Shaun Attwood and wrote a foreword for an anniversary edition of Joseph Bathanti's award-winning prison novel, Coventry.

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