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Share This. Your First Name Only. Friend's First Name Only. Friend's Email Address. I hope you like it. Imagine a life without many creature comforts, imagine feelings of hunger, imagine the pain of knowing that for the affluent and comfortable, your life counts for very little. Students are generally moved by Soto's vivid and honest presentation of personal experiences, his sympathy for the poor, and the accessibility of his work.
They generally wish to know more about Mexican-American and Mexican cultures, more about the plight of farm workers and the urban poor. Despite Soto's distinctiveness, he is very much a contemporary American poet. Like many of his peers, he writes largely in an autobiographical or confessional mode. As an intensively introspective poet, he seeks to maintain his connection to his Mexican heritage as it exists on both sides of the border.
His work often focuses on the loss of a father at an early age, on the difficulties of adolescence especially romantic feelings , and the urgency of family intimacy. On a broader level, Soto speaks passionately on behalf of tolerance and mutual respect while he denounces middle- and upper-class complacency and indifference to the poor. Again, Soto is very much a contemporary American poet, writing autobiographically in free verse and using images that are drawn from ordinary experience and popular culture.
His sympathies for the poor are very typical of contemporary writers from ethnic or underprivileged backgrounds. Although Soto is a Chicano poet in that his Mexican-American heritage is a key aspect of his literary sensibility, he nevertheless aims for a wider audience.
Most of the poems paint a bleak picture of Mexican American life in central California, and Soto received widespread praise for his vivid descriptions, which were sometimes disturbing, but always truthful. The young poet was immediately recognized as an emerging talent, and his following books of poetry further cemented his reputation and garnered him a countless number of prizes.
In , Soto released his second collection, The Tale of Sunlight, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, one of the highest honors in the United States given each year for achievement in journalism or literature. He was one of the first Mexican Americans to be so honored. By Soto had produced four books of poetry and been published in numerous poetry magazines. That same year he branched out and published his first book of prose, called Living Up the Street: Narrative Recollections.
Considering Soto's poems often had a storytelling feel to them, the jump to prose seemed natural. And, just as in his poetry, Soto mined his childhood memories of life in Fresno to fuel his work.
In , several of these essays, along with some new material, were compiled in a single volume called The Effects of Knut Hamsun on a Fresno Boy.
In all of his autobiographical works, readers are introduced to Soto's neighborhood through snapshot descriptions of family, friends, sights, sounds, and smells. In fact, Soto was praised for having a seemingly photographic memory of such ordinary things as "my grandmother sipp[ing] coffee and tearing jelly-red sweetness from a footprint-sized Danish" or a jacket that was the "color of day-old guacamole.
They stir up the past, the memories that are so vivid. Such clear recollections of his youth served Soto well in the s when he turned to writing stories aimed specifically at young readers. Soto claimed, in his BookList biography, that he began writing for children because he wanted to "start Chicanos reading. As Rudolfo Anaya remarked in World Literature Today, "Entire generations of Mexican American schoolchildren went through elementary school without ever having read a story about their culture and their communities.
Baseball features a different character in each of the eleven stories, but all are set in poorer districts of central California. In one story a young girl named Yollie laments the fact that she doesn't have a new dress to wear to the eighth-grade dance; in another, two young boys play baseball for the neighborhood Hobo team because they don't make the Little League team for the third year in a row. Although Soto writes the stories in English, he sprinkles Spanish expressions and phrases throughout, a trend he continued in future works.
Sometimes he even includes a glossary of Spanish terms to help his non-Spanish speaking readers. And, although the stories have a distinct Latino flavor, they appeal to all types of children.
As Diane Roback of Publisher's Weekly commented, "The conflicts and feelings expressed are universal. Soto was always a very prolific writer, but after he left teaching in , his pace picked up even more. By the mids, he was producing as many as three children's books per year. In addition, he dabbled in all types of writing for young readers of all ages.
Soto also writes young adult novels aimed at older teens. Soto's poetry for children is much lighter in tone than his adult works; as he does in his autobiographical prose, he celebrates small moments from his childhood that can be understood by any young person growing up anywhere.
For example, he writes about such everyday activities as running through a lawn sprinkler on a sunny, summer afternoon, going on a first date, or feeding the birds. Some of his middle school novels, such as Summer on Wheels are also lighter fare and show off the silly, quirky side of Soto.
On the other hand, several of Soto's novels are hard-hitting, with characters facing some very tough issues. In Taking Sides , for example, eighth-grader Lincoln Mendoza moves from his inner-city neighborhood to a suburb of Fresno that is predominantly Anglo, or white; as a result his loyalties for his old friends are challenged. When Soto writes for older teens, the topics can be quite complex. One example is the novel Jesse , which the author claims is his personal favorite, perhaps because, as Soto has revealed, it is the most autobiographical.
The story takes place in the early s and is set against the turbulent backdrop of the Vietnam War —75 protests and the beginning of the United Farm Workers movement, an organization that was established to fight for the rights of farm laborers in California.
Sixteen-year-old Jesse leaves home to escape an abusive father, but when he moves in with his older brother he ends up facing a host of other problems, including racism both at his new school and at work. Soto further explores the pressure of growing up as a young Mexican American in 's Buried Onions, which chronicles the story of Eddie, a young man struggling to escape poverty and gang life by going to school and staying far away from his cholos, his gang friends.
Soto picks up the story of gang life in the novel's sequel, The Afterlife, published in But, whereas Buried Onions was described by critics as bleak, Afterlife, was considered to be "filled with hope.
In death, however, Chuy is given the opportunity to explore his life. The story is told from his ghostly perspective, as he roams the streets of the Fresno barrios and visits friends who mourn his passing and family members who seek to avenge his death.
As Chuy's ghostly body begins to disappear, he realizes that his life, no matter how brief, was worth living. By the mids, Soto gave no indication that he was slowing down. He continued to publish books for both adults and children, and when not pursuing other interests such as reading, traveling, or gardening, he was at his desk writing for at least four to five hours per day.
Soto also spent a good deal of time on the road, visiting schools and libraries in order to connect with fans of his books and would-be readers. In his Booklist biography, he describes playing basketball and baseball with young people who come to his readings, singing songs with them, and even acting in skits.
In plans were in the works to make Buried Onions into a movie, with an expected release date of late As a result, publishers expect sales of Soto's books to soar even more. When asked by Quill why his books have such a universal appeal considering most focus on the specific community of Fresno, California, Soto replied: "I think we are all the same.
We might change in dress, we might change in dance or music, we might change in skateboarding or little things like that. But basically, we have the same motive. We like to eat, we like to love, we like to enjoy our free time and friendship. Those things don't change, no matter what.
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