Poems of the barrio and of the Americas beyond Spanish for “helter-skelter,” Trochemoche begins by conjuring life in the barrio, whether in a slum in a Texas border town or in L.A., the vast, hectic, desperate California metropolis where Luis J. Rodríguez grew up. For Rodríguez, only art offered deliverance from the despair of gang violence and poverty, and these poems stand as prayers for transcendence, recorded long after Rodríguez escaped his violent past and began to explore the wider world. Here Rodríguez offers not only songs of the American dream, but a dream of the Americas, a place that invites a pell-mell, sometimes violent, collision of cultures, human impulses, and natural forces. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Luis J. Rodríguez including rare images from the author’s personal collection.