Make a Poem Cry is an anthology of poems from one of California’s high-security prisons brought to us through the creative writing classes of Luis J. Rodríguez, sponsored by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. Rodríguez, who is Tia Chucha Press’s founding editor, and formerly incarcerated writer Kenneth E. Hartman have selected work penned from 2016 to 2018. These are poems, essays, stories, and more mined from the depths of familial, racial, and economic violence. They are imaginings for how to address trouble and crime without punishment, dehumanization, and violence in return. Here’s restorative/transformative justice in action. Here’s redemption in the flesh. Here are voices and viewpoints needed for a just and equitable world for all. “There are few places left where putting pen to paper remains the dominant mode of formal communication, but so it is inside the jails and prisons of this country. Whether it’s sad letters to family members, or desperate pleas to heedless courts and government functionaries, or long, passionate missives to lovers on the other side of the fences, the average man or woman in prison talks to the rest of the world through words written on paper.” —Kenneth E. Hartman, from the preface Luis J. Rodriguez has published fifteen books of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and nonfiction. He is best known for his 1993 memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. His awards include a Finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, a Paterson Poetry Prize, a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and fellowships from the Sundance Institute, the Lannan Foundation, the City of Los Angeles, the City of Chicago, the California Arts Council, and the Illinois Arts Council, among others. His latest book is It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing.