We Were Always Here

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Ricardo Chavira writes in his memoir about the challenges growing up in a marginalized community in Pacoima, California, where he attended a high school notorious for gang violence and inadequate teaching. Against all the odds, he managed to reject gang affiliation, avoid serious crimes, evade the Vietnam War draft and earn undergraduate and graduate degrees. He became passionate about journalism because it gave him the chance to report about the lives of Latinos that mainstream American media either ignored or misrepresented -- Backcover.