Review: Always Running
Crux was a memoir that derived its impact from the literary framing that Guerrero put on her family’s story. In Always Running, Luis Rodriguez comes at his memoir from another direction. He tells his story plainly – starkly in places. That clean, simple approach lets his times and his perspective imbue his experience with heft and meaning.
Rodriguez writes crisply and evocatively without poetical flourishes that might distract from his narrative. Much of his point is that so many shared his circumstances and faced their own difficulties, victories, and tragedies all around him. Directly relating his life and the others it touches magnifies it.
That said, the differences that inspire him to challenge his readers and his society are all the more powerful because they seem so small at first. A few little choices mean the difference between a life of petty violence and a life of social reform. His life and his friends’ lives are continually balanced on a razor’s edge.
Recommended.