Quote by Cristie Horvath / CJYO 2013 Student
Responding to connections between Part I of Hearts & Hands, Violence of Youth, the Absence of Elders, and the closing chapters of Always Running*
Always Running is an excellent memoir and a very descriptive work detailing Luis Rodriguez’s survival of the ordeals he faced while growing up in an East Los Angeles barrio. I feel that it complements our Hearts and Hands text in that it shows a first hand account of the issues many of our nation’s young are facing today as well as demonstrates the kind of situations the kids Luis Rodriguez discusses in Hearts and Hands were going through. In the later chapters of Always Running we see Luis growing and changing as a person and many of the programs and solutions he advocates in Hearts and Hands were the same ones that helped him turn his own life around and through that the two works are interconnected. “There was something about the way Chente and the others made sense; the way they made dead things come alive – how they took what seemed obvious and proved the direct opposite. The words were a fascinating revelation for me. Another culture. I had never experienced anything like it. Here all perceptions were challenged. Here knowledge, this elusive dove which had never before found a landing near my grasp, could be gently held – where it would not fly away” (Rodriguez, 2005, p. 156).
Photograph by chodra "education"
No comments:
Post a Comment