My Nature Is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989 – 2004

"This poetry is of the barrio yet stubbornly refuses to be confined in it-Rodrguez's perceptive gaze and storyteller's gift transport his world across neighborhood boundaries."-"Publishers Weekly" on "Trochemoche"

"While filled with the heart and words of Chicano culture, Rodrguez's poems transcend the scope of race and ethnicity. The topics he addresses in this book-relationships, justice, love, and the irony of daily life-are, or should be, the subjects that envelop us all. It is this universality, cloaked in the specific encounters of his life that make his writing as gripping to readers living in inner-city America as to those living in small-town USA."-"Sojourners" on "Trochemoche"

"My Nature is Hunger" is the first poetry collection in five years by this major award-winning Latino author. It includes selections from his previous books, "Poems Across the Pavement," "The Concrete River," and "Trochemoche," and 26 new poems that reflect his increasingly global view, his hard-won spirituality, and his movement toward reconciliation with his family and his past.

Though Rodrguez is the most authentic voice of the barrio, many reviewers have commented on the universality of his work.

The son of Mexican immigrants, Luis J. Rodrguez grew up in Watts and East Los Angeles. He began writing in his early teens and eventually won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children's book writer, and critic. He is currently working as a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level. After spending 15 years in Chicago, Rodrguez returned with his family to Los Angeles, where he helped create Tia Chucha's Caf & Centro Cultural, a multi-arts, multimediacultural center in the northeast San Fernando Valley.