Kirkus Review of Hard Knocks

“…While Lopez is a terse storyteller (as the book’s 133-page length attests), he displays a strong facility with language: “Poetry and timing; I always possessed mad poetry skills. As a child, I wrote ‘Ode to a Bathtub,’ a haunting lament so full of sorrow that it almost persuaded my mother to relinquish me from my chore of cleaning the bathtub.”…A candid but streamlined account of a rough coming-of-age journey….” — Kirkus Reviews