Book Review of Luis J. Rodríguez’s “Todos Los Caminos Llevan a Casa” by Rey M. Rodríguez
“Reprinted by permission of the literary journal, Full Stop, where it first appeared as an online exclusive (2025)."
At a time when the US President calls for mass deportations of migrants out of, among other things, a xenophobic and racist need to placate his followers, reading and promoting Chicano literature is more urgent than ever. Lives are being altered and destroyed based on false narratives of immigrants coming from Mexico and the rest of Latin America. But counternarratives are to be found in the works of Chicano authors and poets, writers like Manuel Muñoz, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Matt Sedillo, Octavio Quintanilla, Vincent Cooper, Alejandro Jimenez, Yaccaira Salvatierra, Xánath Caraza, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Luis Alberto Urea, Sergio Troncoso, Ada Limón, Sandra Cisneros, Reyna Grande, among many others. High on the list of books to read is Luis J. Rodríguez’s Todos los Caminos Llevan a Casa: Poemas Bilingües/ All Roads Lead Home: Bilingual Poems.
Chicanxs Sin Fronteras is a Mexico City (Tenochtitlan) publishing house dedicated to publishing Chicano literature in Mexico. Recent titles include Migrantes Valientes: Stories of the South and North and Our Corazones Are Still Burning by Matt Sedillo. The binational nature of Rodríguez’sbook is important because it shows that other nations, including Mexico, are now appreciating and accepting the beauty and power of Chicano art. Chicano artists like Matt Sedillo are now regularly invited to international poetry venues throughout Europe and Latin America. In Japan, a burgeoning Chicano culture has emerged. Indeed, the values found in the Chicano movement may be more appreciated abroad than in the United States, a country that elects a person to the country’s highest office who calls Mexicans rapists and vermin, naming U.S. citizens of Mexican descent as less than citizens who poison the blood of the country. Few other Chicano books bridge the cultural divide that exists between the United States and Mexico like Todos los Caminos Llevan a Casa.
In the past, Chicanos have been referred to in Mexican culture as “pochos,” assimilated Americans who had lost their language (Spanish) and their Mexican culture after migrating to the United States. Mexican publishers did not publish Chicano literature because there was no market for it; these books were thought to be written by people who had disavowed their country and did not know where they came from. They didn’t know their roots.
Rodríguez enters this publishing landscape with a tour-de-force book, destroying this Mexican myth and countering the hatred towards Chicanos in the United States, employing both English and Spanish, triumphantly saying that all roads lead home. For him, home is where we are all embraced and loved for who we are. Rodríguez was the poet laureate of Los Angeles from 2014 to 2016. He is the author of seventeen books, including novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, and children’s books. He is best known for the best-selling memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. His latest memoir is the sequel, It Calls You Back. In 2020, Seven Stories Press released his first book of essays, From Our Land to Our Land: Essays, Journeys & Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer.
Rodríguez’s latest book is a layering of cultures, languages, ideas, and emotions. Let’s start with the poet’s name because he also goes by his Indigenous name Mixcoatl Itztalcuiloh. The use of this name signals right on the cover that one road leading home is honoring his Indigenous past in much the same way that Guillermo Bonfil Batalla invited Mexicans to do so in his monumental book, Mexico Profundo, in which he argued that Mexico would never fully realize its full potential until it recognized its Indigenous past. Too many layers of racism have been laid down, starting from the Spanish Invasion of Mexico in 1519 to now accurately see in the present the spectacular wealth of culture, wisdom, scientific knowledge, intellect, and grace that Indigenous people have to offer in this moment.
In the poem, Rodríguez writes:
On that blank paperthe man designs another landscape
with no poisons
with new roads
that curve toward a new home.
He draws birds, yet I witness in his hand what launches
new spaces,
new parks,
new abodes
where everyone belongs,
where nobody has to stake a claim
because all are claimed, . . . .
En ese papel en blanco
el hombre diseña otro paisaje
sin venemos,
con nuevos caminos
que se curvan hacia nuevos hogares
Él dibuja pajaros
sin embargo, soy testigo en su mano de lo que lanza
nuevos espacios
nuevos parques
nuevas maradas
donde todos pertenecen
donde nadie tiene que reclamar,
porque todos son reclamados . . . .
The blank page represents a choice: we can cause the page to remain blank or try to transform it. In this case, an unhoused Chicano transformed it with a pen and his imagination. Art released him from his prison under the viaduct so that he could imagine a world “where nobody has to stake a claim because all are claimed.” He drew birds for a reason; they symbolize freedom from the poverty of the moment and freedom to dream of other potentials like new spaces, parks, and abodes. Spaces where everyone belongs. The poem expresses that even in the grief of being homeless a man can still create. He can still make art out of chaos and maybe even some order will come out of the experience. Amid all this grime, there’s gold. We need to reimagine a new Los Angeles and a world where everybody’s needs are in alignment with nature; our nature; the nature of relationships; and the divine. Rodríguez’s words are straightforward and uncomplicated, but they paint a sophisticated and hopeful future where we all belong.
There are many important poems in the collection, but one I love as I continue to study to be a poet is “When a Poet Appears.” It is a perfect poem for the moment because it calls on creators of all kinds, but mainly poets to see the beauty in life and provide the youth with a reason for hope. “When a poet appears the Earth springs into song / Flowered with new hope, / A bright beginning even from a terribly seeded past / Where dust and stones are a bare sowing ground.” He continues, “Poets know there’s a design to their lives. / Braided with threads of the future / They don’t just make and remake language / They are called to it…” Rodríguez suggests in this passage that writers and poets not only bring joy in bleak times, but they also have no other choice but to write. They must capture what is occurring now and reflect on the times we are living. The great poets like Teresa de Ávila, Langston Hughes, and Federico García Lorca use words to capture what the reader needs to hear. I cannot think of a better time for poets to rise and start describing the world, when it seems that we have lost our understanding that we are all inexorably connected. We profoundly need each other regardless of our legal status, religion, gender, race, and ethnicity. Rodríguez’s poetry reminds us that we have a voice to begin to make the clarion call for civility and kindness through poetry.
In this time of darkness, when it seems that the forces of hatred and bigotry are trying to promote division, I am reminded by Todos Los Caminos Llevan a Casa that we will persevere if we each take up the torch and begin to create that world that we want to live in. The bilingual nature of the book only accentuates the message that we must reach out to those who are unable or unwilling to talk to one another. Todos Los Caminos bridges two important language communities and invites them to find each other through poetry. This book will not only be a useful tool for bringing readers within the United States together, but it serves to bring two culturally rich countries, the United States and Mexico, to understand each other better. Of course, the invitation is not exclusive to these two nations but to anyone with a beating heart. This collection attempts to cross borders. Rodriguez believes that poetry is a powerful way to break through the “walls” among Chicanos who are US born like him and part of the Mexican diaspora. Mexican Americans and Chicanos have been part of the land for centuries, as Indigenous peoples. His poetry hopes to speak to this existence and, more universally, the journey we are all seeking, to understand and see one another in our fullness and to find our way home.
Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City and a poetry book inspired by a prominent nonprofit in East LA. He has attended the Yale Writers’ Workshop multiple times and Palabras de Pueblo workshop once. He participated in Story Studio’s Novel in a Year Program. He is a first-year fiction creative writing student at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ MFA Program. His poetry is published in Huizache. His other interviews and book reviews are at La Bloga, Chapter House’s Storyteller’s Corner, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review.
