Unprecedented Amor: Pura Neta Ben Bac Sierra con Always Running: La Vida Loca Luis Rodriguez, W 9/30 from 7-8 p.m.

Unprecedented Amor:

Pura Neta author Ben Bac Sierra in conversation with Luis Rodriguez, pre-eminent Chicano author of the classic, Always Running: La Vida Loca, at the San Francisco Public Library (virtual) on Wednesday, September 30 from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.!

Full description of event here: https://sfpl.org/events/2020/09/30/author-benjamin-bac-sierra-conversation-luis-rodriguez

Yes, this is unprecedented amor: a San Fran Northern Califas Homey author professor discussing literature, poetry, vida loca, and Pura Neta with a respected award-winning So Cal Xicanx writer, activist, and loved one, Luis Rodriguez. Imagination and wisdom are beyond borders, make-believe walls that keep us separated and distracted from what is really going on.

More than ever, now is the time for gente to unite for our universal empowerment.

Writers are the life-blood of the collective mind. Poets are the pulse of the spirit. Here are two varrio writers who lived La Vida Loca and now are harnessing that energy to battle oppression and to create critical amor. It is my honor to invite you to our discussion and also to announce Pura Neta’s release date: Wednesday, September 30. You will be able to pre-order the book by mid-September with a special Pochino Press code for a discounted price.

Pura Neta is sick-with-it and lots of love, speaking truth and imagination (Pura Neta) to ears that want to hear and gente who want to evolve and start some good shit 🙂 It is actually the sequel to my first novel, Barrio Bushido, the code of the loco.

Set in the San Francisco Mission varrio from 2012 to 2014, Pura Neta explores the creative struggle of Homeboys and Homegirls fighting against gentrification, police brutality, racism, and economic and educational injustice. Cartoon, a Homeboy who had been banished from the varrio twenty years earlier, has returned from his educational and spiritual odyssey. He finds the hood under attack, and it is no longer the gangs, but the monsters of cafes, cheese schools, and micro-breweries, protected by their own police force, that are destroying the native San Franciscans. In order to strategize a meaningful movement, Cartoon visits his old mentor, El Lobo, a varrio shot caller who is now serving a life prison sentence in San Quentin. Cartoon then recruits the young Homeys to begin implementing amor action in the hood, until the police murder a Loved One, which ultimately sparks The Revolt of the Roots.

To read more about Pura Neta, click the link: Pura Neta

Luis Rodriguez is a former Los Angeles Poet Laureate. He has 16 books, is founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and co-founder Tia Chucha’s Cultural Center & Bookstore. Rodriguez has two autobiographical accounts of his experiences with gang violence and addiction, It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone, 2012), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, and a mandatory read, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (Curbstone Books, 1993), winner of the Carl Sandburg Award of the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. His latest book, From Our Land to Our Land Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings From A Native Xicanx Writer, explores race, culture, identity and belonging and what these all mean and should mean (but often fail to) in the volatile climate of our nation.