Mac Foster
Mrs. Brown
Adv 11th Lit
15 December 2016
Gary Soto
Gary Soto, a Mexican-American author, was born in 1952, Fresno, California. His parents were both Mexican-American. Soto did not expect a lot in his life, he imagined he would "’marry Mexican poor, work Mexican hours, and in the end die a Mexican death, broke and in despair’" (Lee). That’s what many people would have predicted for him. However, he instead became a writer of great worth, writing poems and short stories. “Soto is one of the most important voices in Chicano literature”(Sullivan). Soto, an established writer, uses his experience from life and his surroundings when he was a child to write stories about life in a Mexican-American community.
Soto grew up in a small family, …show more content…
Having grown up in Fresno as a Mexican American, Soto knows the facts about how life was back then. There was some discrimination, as demonstrated, “The cop said I was wanted for a brutal beating of an old man in a Laundromat”(Soto 104). This is an example of discrimination, as young Eddie was indeed not responsible for the attack. However, the cop arrested him because he was a Mexican American teen, like the attacker. The poverty in which the people lived is also shown in this story. Eddie would go around doing a bunch of little odd jobs to earn any money he could. “It was three o’clock and what I needed they had but wouldn’t give up: money”(Soto 17). In this scenario, Eddie had made a deal with a man, that if he moved the air conditioner to the curb he would be paid a dollar. He fulfilled that obligations, but was refused the dollar, due to the man’s wife yelling at her husband for trying to sell it. Eddie left after being denied what he needed and had earned. In the story, Fresno is a rather violent place. You got to keep your guard up,because any moment could be you last. As written in the story, “...your life could spill like soda right on the black asphalt, spill before you could even touch your wounds”(Soto, 6). It’s a dangerous place, one where you could die in the blink of an eye. Eddie talks about this when he is called and only slows, but …show more content…
There was not a lot of opportunity for anyone, especially Mexican Americans. The work they could get would be hard and dangerous. Eddie, however, found a different way, “I had to get out of town, and signing up was the only way out” (Soto 142). There was such a lack of opportunity for him that he found his only way out was to enlist into the military. It was the best option he had and the best chance for a better life. Soto’s way out was through college and his writing. He used college to avoid the draft and found his way to becoming a successful writer, that was his path. His circumstances were not great either. He lived in little rundown part of Fresno, where the unemployable would wound up. As is stated, “I returned to my apartment, which was in a part of Fresno where fences sagged and the paint blistered on houses” (Soto 2). Eddie’s life was not that great, nor were many others. According to the full description, the community in which his apartment resides is full of old house, the unemployed, and dogs on chains. It definitely appears to be a community full of poverty. In Fresno, there were not just Mexican Americans, but many other cultures and people as well. Like all of America, it was a mixing pot. “The North side of Fresno is mostly white, with a little brown here and a little black there. Koreans, too, Vietnamese with boatloads of genuine smarts”(Soto 12). There were many different kinds of people and therefore