Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community

Edited by Luis J. Rodriguez 

and Denise M. Sandoval, PH.D.

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Tia Chucha (April 30, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882688430
• ISBN-13: 978-1882688432

The Northeast San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is the second largest community of Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States with 500,000 people. Yet, until 2001 the Northeast Valley had no trade bookstores, movie houses, art galleries, or decent cultural spaces. That year Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural opened its doors, first as a cultural café, which in ten years has provided workshops in music, visual arts, dance, theater, writing, and indigenous cosmology—along with an art gallery, a poetry press, a youth empowerment project, and the only annual outdoor literacy and performance festival in the area, “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed & Sung.” 

Rushing Waters, Rising Dreams borrows its name from the name of one of its communities Pacoima, a Native American word meaning “rushing waters.” Interviews with artists, community leaders, poli­ticians, and well-known personalities essays, research, photos, art pieces, poetry, and cultural tableau, explore twenty years of how the lack of neighborhood cultural spaces adversely affects struggling fam­ilies and communities, and how the example of Tia Chucha’s inspires a cultural awakening and a revival of the economy and community spirit. The book speaks to a need for a national arts policy of cultural spaces, arts education, independent bookstores, public art projects, and more. Funded in part by the Los Angeles County Arts Commis­sion.

Denise M. Sandoval, Ph.D is an Associate Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge. An expert on Chicana/Chicano culture, in particular the well-known lowrider car phenomena, Ms. Sandoval has curated low­rider shows at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico, among others.
 

Luis J. Rodriguez co-founded Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural with his wife Trini and other family members and community leaders. Luis is the author of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and nonfiction books, including the bestselling memoir, Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. His latest memoir is It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing.