Luis Martinez keeps teaching us about real life through his words
A nd so the street kid turned author has been published again, the guy they call "Chino" and his cautionary tales about the dangerous romance of the streets and the enduring lessons they taught him.
"Chino" is otherwise known as Luis Martinez, a 1995 New London High grad, who has followed his successful novel "Loser" with "Lie'f" — pronounced "Life," but with accent on the "Lie" part. An easy, yet compelling read whose merciless honesty captures Martinez's life as kid in New London as a drug dealer.
"My target audience is people in the streets. But also to give people, especially kids, an idea of what it's like to be out there," Martinez was saying the other day at Muddy Waters. "Lie'f is about living a lie, which is pretty much what we were doing in the streets. A fantasy life. In the end you get nothing you ever pictured. And of course, the consequences."
A primer on Chino: Sometimes, he was a baseball player (part of New London's 1994 championship team.) Sometimes, he was a drug dealer. Bullets, he says, barely missed him several times. It was because of him that he walked downstairs once and found his mother and father in handcuffs, following a drug raid of their home.
And nobody knew at the time — not his high school buddies or certainly anyone he ran with — that Martinez used writing as his outlet. This self-proclaimed 'D' student was an evolving writer and author, chronicling details of dealings and shootings and near misses as they happened. Now it's all there in "Loser" and "Lie'f."
Which brings us to a modest proposal:
Martinez's writings should become part of the high school curriculum. He is a Whaler and an author with authentic stories about the city that kids here need to read. It is real-life education, resonating with kids in ways that Beowulf just can't.
"A lot of parents have called me to tell me they passed their books on to their kids," Martinez said. "That means more than anything else to me. For their kids to read the book, it's like a warning. You can go through it or you can read about it.
"I was talking to a kid the other day and all he talked about was gangsters and thugs. I have this conversation with a lot of teens. They don't get it. But I didn't get it either when I was their age. I think kids will
book because it's in simple English and nothing in there hasn't happened already. Kids can apply this to real life."
Lest you read that as a self-promotional sales pitch, read on.
Martinez formed what's become a lifelong friendship with Alvin Young, a former basketball player at Mitchell College, whose success story belongs on "60 Minutes." Young, a street kid from Brooklyn, went from Mitchell to play at Division I Niagara, using basketball to augment his education. Now he works on Wall St. with CCAR, the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, which helps the Federal Reserve promote a more safe and efficient banking and financial system.
"Chino's books are about real life," Young said. "Kids need to read them. Look, I work with a lot of smart people in these (Wall St.) offices. But if you can't reach kids in a language they understand, it doesn't matter how smart you are. They're not taking it in. Chino's books are in a language kids can relate to. That's half the battle. Everything evolves. The way we teach kids should, too."
Young, always with enviable people skills, said Martinez's cachet goes beyond the cautionary tales of his books. Martinez has a way of teaching kids how to have a difference of opinion and express themselves properly.
"Chino and I would walk around New London figuring out life together," Young said. "One thing I've learned through basketball and corporate life is that people are intimidated by differences of opinion. Chino taught me how to see a different point of view and then express yourself. That's how you affect change.
"To understand how to solve a problem," Young said, "you have to understand where the problem came from. If you're just going to mush it in my face, I'm going to reject it. But if you help me understand the train of thought, we can fix it."
And this — yes, this — is Martinez's gift. His words can truly help the kids here if the adults are willing to follow through. But then, isn't that the very definition of what ails New London? Big ideas, no follow through.
Here is a chance to teach real life.
"I was always caught in the middle of trying to do better and afraid of what it would look like if I let all this go," Martinez said. "I always wondered: What's waiting on the other side? It's a hard transition to go from the streets to work. From having your own rules to having a boss telling you what to do.
"If the streets are your goal, read this before you go out there. Here's a warning about what's out there. There are conversations with drug dealers and with people who have committed murder.
"I see people my age now still in the streets. There comes a time when you're too old to be out there. When they read the book, it makes sense to them. But they can't let it go. I was lucky. I chose to write. Everyone else went to prison and learned the lesson that way. I've said before, there are no bad guys out there, just people who take shortcuts." And there's the question: Can we reach some of our kids before they take the shortcuts? This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro