33 pages • 1 hour read
Always Running
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Themes
Identity
Identity is a core theme in Always Running. Luis’ earliest sense of identity is about what he is not, rather than what he is. As the child of Mexican immigrants in a racially divided Los Angeles, Luis is constantly made to feel as though he is not really an American or a legitimate resident in his own home. “Don’t speak Spanish, don’t be Mexican—you don’t belong” (19). Luis’ identity isn’t being Mexican so much as it is being a non-American living in America. His identity is also tied up in what he does not have. His family is impoverished, and when he receives new, shiny Christmas toys from a local charity, he proceeds to break them all. “I suppose in my mind it didn’t seem right to have things that were in working order, unspent” (22).
With his childhood identity centered around what he lacks—American citizenship, money—it seems inevitable that as he grows, Luis goes searching for a different sense of belonging. He finds it in his elementary and middle school friend groups (clicas) that serve as a sandbox version of gangs. “It was something to belong to—something that was ours” (41). The clicas age and obtain flashier symbols of identity and membership, like “jackets…their own colors…identification cards” (43). Luis moves from his clica to Animal Tribe, from Animal Tribe to the Lomas, constantly looking for solid ground, a place to feel powerful and safe. After he is violently initiated in the Lomas, Luis reacts with pride despite his pain. “I was a Lomas loco now” (109).
Luis does find a sense of identity outside of the gang, and he implies that it was this that allowed him to ultimately break from the Lomas. He finds a sense of ethnic identity and pride, rather than shame, as he and his friend Esme make the school mascot (The Aztec) into an accurate depiction of indigenous Mexican culture. He finds identity as an artist, as he paints images that express his culture and his life experiences. And finally, he finds identity as a poet and writer.
Senses
Luis relies heavily on description of his five senses throughout the novel. This is done for two reasons: to transport the reader and to separate Luis as a character from the rest of his fellow gang members. The author mentions in his Introduction a desire to show the reader a world they may not have previously seen, and the use of sensory details is key in this endeavor. Luis repeatedly calls upon his senses, particularly smell, to give readers a sense of place. When he describes his childhood neighborhood as smelling “of fried lard, of beans and car fumes, of factory smoke and home-brew out of backyard stills” (23) the reader cannot help getting a crystal clear picture of the place Luis was raised in. The smells he describes, in addition to being evocative and specific, give detail beyond their smell. From this quote alone, we know that the people of the neighborhood cook using lard (rather than oil), eat traditional Mexican food and make moonshine, all in the shadow of industrial plants.
Luis is particularly in touch with his senses, which are closely tied to his emotions. He describes a particularly traumatic moment—the attack on Chava—in terms of smell and sounds. He describes “the sweet-smelling blades of grass” and “the peals of chimes near the back door, moths colliding into a light bulb,” using these strong, almost violent sounds to show his own horror at the events unfolding. This connection between Luis’ senses and his conscience puts him in contrast to his friends. Before his very first robbery, he tells a friend that he doesn’t feel good about committing the crime. “‘What’s this feel shit,’” his friend says. “‘I’m not asking for a temperature’” (77). For Luis' friends, feelings are for the most basic of senses—cold and hot. They have learned to repress any deeper feelings, but Luis has not. It is this access to his emotions, to his senses, that keeps Luis from remaining a gang member all his life.
Names
Names are immensely important in Luis’ life, from his childhood to his gang life through to his career as an author. Luis is not called by his given name as a child, but rather “Grillo” meaning “cricket” in Spanish. Each of Luis’ siblings are given an animal name at birth by their father. And a cricket seems an appropriate animal for little Luis, who is slight and overlooked.
When he joins his first gang, Luis needs a new name. Every gang member has a nickname, a way to signal who they are as well as prevent identification by the police or rival gang members. Luis becomes “Chin” referring to his jawline deformity. This name has significance, as Luis’ jaw was injured during a childhood fight with older neighborhood bullies who insulted Rano, his older brother. This was the first time Luis truly fought back, as “anger flowed through” setting up his reasons for joining a gang in the first place: a need to belong and a need to feel powerful. His brother, Rano, by contrast, chooses a new name to signal his separation from his ancestry. Rano (born Jose) becomes Joe, an English name that will allow him to more easily access Anglo society and culture, something Luis, as a member of a Chicano gang, explicitly rejects.
Names also act as a marker between cultures. Where Americans call the river separating Mexico and the United States the Rio Grande, Mexicans like Luis and his family refer to the river as the Rio Bravo, meaning “fierce” rather than “big.” This, Luis argues, gives “the name a power ‘Rio Grande’ just doesn’t have” (19).
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