Anthology Gary Soto Shaun Moberg Per. 9 MR. Takch

Table of Contents

Poems A Red Palm Saturday At The Canal The Map Afternoon Memory Looking Around, Believing Website taken from… Biography taken from…

Preface/Biography Owing much of his successful writing to his childhood and teenage years as a Mexican-American in a Chicano district of California, Gary Soto’s works are primarily based off his own experiences. His works reflect the adversities of his ethnicity, poverty, and destitution throughout his youth. He has written poems, novels, short stories, and there are many collections of his works. Soto was even the youngest American poet to have himself and his works included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California in He grew up there in a Chicano community in the San Joaquin Valley. When Soto was just five years of age, his father was killed in a factory accident, thus leaving his widowed wife with three children: Gary, his older brother, Rick, and his younger sister, Debra. His family did not have books and was not expected or encouraged to read. He survived life in the community, though it was very difficult. Even as a child and teenager, Soto displayed dignity amidst poverty and proved that a poor, Mexican-American could amount to something great. Soto’s grandparents had emigrated from Mexico, making Soto roughly half- Mexican. His ethnicity influenced his writing and he gathered many of his ideas from his countless experiences and exploits as a child.

Biography Con’t… His childhood education was not of good quality, for Soto spent most of his childhood working for money to help support his family. Still, he continued on through high school in California and went on to attend California State University at Fresno. There, Soto received his English Degree in 1974 and proceeded to attend the University of California at Irvine, where he obtained his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. During his transition from high school to college, Soto gradually began writing, at first only for satisfaction. He wished to express himself and to inform the world about his perspective: the life and times of a poor Mexican-American growing up in a Chicano community in California. Soto described his family as an “illiterate family” which made his determination to write even greater. He legitimately began poetry in college as a start to his career. Plus he had no experience in any other field besides labor. Writing was Soto’s best bet for a successful profession. While Soto was working on his graduate degree, he met the woman who would soon become his wife. Her name is Carolyn Oda. She is Japanese- American and together they had a daughter named Mariko. Carolyn and Mariko greatly influenced Soto’s work and helped him gather ideas, as do his two cats: Corky and Sharkie.

Biography Con’t… Gary has received many awards to go along with his collection of works. Living Up The Street has received a Before Columbus Foundation 1985 American Book Award. He has been featured in Poetry Magazine and won the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award. Soto also received the Discovery-The Nation Prize, the U.S. Award of the International Poetry Forum, and The California Library Association's John and Patricia Beatty Award, which he has won twice. On top of his literature, Soto produced the film “The Pool Party”, which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal. In 1999, he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation and The Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association. To many, Soto is best known for his fiction, most of which reflect his life in a poverty ridden Chicano community.

Poems Subject A Red Palm-Your out in a field, under the burning hot sun among the cotton plants tired to death thinking of your past. Afternoon Memory-He's in his house thinking about all the things around him in the refrigerator, & in his house, & also thinks about what's going on around him. Looking Around Believing- He’s talking about his neighborhood and what the people/things in the neighborhood are doing. Saturday At The Canal-He’s talking about him as a teenager at a canal with his friend talking about what they were doing and planed to do. The Map-He’s talking about an oleander that opens a map and marks it with an X and a new river arises nameless from the river Orinoco that cuts east.

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