Gary Soto Seventh Grade Short Story

“Looking for Work”, by Gary Soto, is about a little Mexican boy who wants his family to mimic the families that he sees in reality and also the families that he sees on the television. He also wants to begin working at a very early age. He would go house-to-house on his block and ask for duties the owners if there was anything that he could do to earn some money. The little boy wanted his family to dress up wherever they went because he wanted him and his family to feel approved by the other higher-class families. The author describes there family as a middle-class family, but apparently the little boy was watched too much television and wants his family to improve their living habits.

“Seventh Grade” was an internal conflict because Victor was always having problems that would take place inside his mind. In the story, he had tried to bump into Teresa when she left the room so he could speak to her. He would always be trying to impress Teresa. Mr. Baldor had abetted Victor when he knew that Victor did not know French nevertheless

First, he didn’t have rules and policies or it was not mentioned in the story. Second, Victor was trying to impress someone that he had a crush on. Third, victor and seven classes. Also, he takes French class and he got to choose an elective for a class. Victor, got to choose witch language class like Spanish of French. Also, Victor had a crush on this girl he knew from catechism. He made a secret handshake with his friends. Victor thinks he will like 7th grade!

He had planned to talk about his book Macho, but when he faced the crowd of teachers, his experience at school came back into his mind. He said he had faced a lot of abuse and his efforts to overcome bad teaching and become a writer. He admired good teachers with all his heart but criticized bad teachers. That presentation was not what the audience expected. Some reacted cruelly and left, but most of audience stayed and listened to him. After that, Victor was invited to give more speeches to let the audience know what worked in their education system.

Throughout the autobiographical narrative written by Gary Soto, many different literary elements are used to recreate the experience of his guilty six-year old self. Different elements such as contrast, repetition, pacing, diction, and imagery. Soto narrates this story as a young boy at a time when he seems to be young and foolish, Soto foolmaking mistakes, but at the same time hoping to learn from them. Soto uses each of these devices to convey different occurrences in the narrative.

Gary Soto is a popular Mexican-American author, who uses his experiences and cultural background to tell stories. Soto effectively uses his cultural background, the importance of family, and experiences to tell stories in a way that readers can either relate to or vividly imagine. Over the course of his career, Soto has earned worldwide recognition and continues to serve as one of the main faces of international authors success in American literature.

Gary Soto, a Mexican-American author, was born in 1952 in Fresno, California. His parents were both Mexican-American. Soto did not expect a lot from 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). Instead, he became a great writer of poems and short stories. James Sullivan describes Soto as “one of the most important voices in Chicano literature” and Don Lee counts Soto as “one of the best Chicano poets of his time” having published over twenty books. Soto, an established writer, uses experiences from his life and his observations of his community to write stories about life in a Mexican-American community with characters and conflicts that are relatable.

Whenever people read stories they don’t notice that the characters change throughout the story, here are a couple ways that this character changed throughout the article “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto.In the beginning, it shows that Victor is not very shy at school. In the article it says “He stretched out lazily to disguise his snooping.”( Soto 1.)This shows that he is not super nervous because he is not afraid to snoop or spy on a girl. Next, Victor got very nervous and was self conscious about everything.In the text it says “Great rose bushes of red bloomed on Victor’s cheeks.”( Soto 1.)This shows he was nervous because he was his cheeks turned red when he did not understand the question because the teacher said it in French. Finally, at the

teacher who was supposed to take him in and teach him, help nurture him, encourage him, and inspire his will to learn did nothing but completely write him off for the simple fact that this child didn’t speak english. She “couldn’t deal with him” so she sat him in a corner and ignored him. The situation was no different when Grillo was sent to another class, yet again he was sat in a corner the only difference this time being that the teacher was a little nicer about telling him he wasn’t wanted. However despite the sweetness she injected into her voice Luis still knew he wasn’t wanted, so due to his mistreatment he became reluctant to talk to anyone; even to ask to go the bathroom. As Grillo got older his outlook on school only got worse, he became a troubled child

In the coming of age novel by Gary Soto, A Summer Life, the author writes, “I sprained an ankle, limped for two weeks until the sparks of pain stopped, then I decided I should limp the rest of the summer because girls seemed to notice hurt guys.” (Soto 82)this passage appealed to me tremendously. The main reason being the different ways that the reader could anatomize the text. The sheer syntax of this sentence holds a plethora of meaning. There could be readers who perceive Soto to be writing this excerpt for the sole purpose of proving the point of Gary’s self-consciousness. However, some people might analyze the quote, and read it as a demotion of women because of the way they are said to view men in this specific text. Whichever way the reader might analyze the text, the fact is that Gary immaturely exaggerated his injury for the attention of others.

Conflicts supports the theme that one should be thankful in “Growing Up” by Gary Soto. The conflict of the passage is that Maira is not thankful for the amazing family that she has and is very rude to them. Soto has the character Maria getting into arguments with her father. For example in paragraph eleven the it says “ ‘I know, I know.

On September 6, 2015 a man tried to carve his name into a wall at the Alamo. The man was caught and taken to jail. He was faced with many charges.

In the short story the Jacket by Gary Soto, the narrator's life is affected by the jacket, because the main character probably didn't want to hurt his mom's feelings by saying he didn't like the jacket or didn't want it because he knew that they didn't have a lot of money for the expensive leather jacket. The narrator says “I threw it on my brothers bed and looked at it for a long time befor i slipped it on and went out to the back yard smiling a “thank you” to mom” (gary soto). The quote proves that he actually didn't want the jacket but kept it and pretend to like it anyways because he didn't want to hurt his mom's feelings,

First, I will start with the Positive consequences. My first consequence is “Does Victor have a chance to make Teresa his girl?”. In the story “Seventh Grade”, it seemed that Victor had a chance when Teresa asked Victor to help her with French.Teresa seemed to be impressed with Victor’s French. She didn’t notice that Victor wasn’t speaking actual French, but his French teacher, Mr. Bueller, notice but didn’t say anything. Mr. Bueller looked back into his college years when he dated his girlfriend, which made him thought that Victor likes Teresa. The second consequence, “is Victor going to like seventh grade?”. Victor’s main goal was to make Teresa his girl. While Victor was trying to speak French, Teresa had the idea to ask Victor to help

A story of the life of a student who has dealt with being an outsider throughout school. This is the story of my friend Maxell. Who throughout elementary and middle school had a difficult time in school. Particularly in middle school, when his problems were unquestionably noticeable. Moreover, I have known Maxell since the 3rd grade, after I transferred schools. After knowing him for a while, to me, my friend Maxell was a normal child, I never saw Maxell as a different person. It wasn’t until I saw the yearbook and found out he was in the special education classes. Then I wondered why he was in special education classes. Furthermore, the time came when we left elementary school and started a new journey in middle school. In middle school, one of the noticeable changes of his behavior was the change of clothing style. Maxell went from dressing “normal” like everyone else to dressing like a gangster with baggy jeans and oversized t-shirts. My first reaction to this evident change was that it was normal because most of our friends and classmates started to dress differently, during middle school. As a result, telling someone about Maxell’s behavior, like a teacher, adult, or even his parents were the last things in my mind to do. I think that if any of his friends including myself talked to a teacher or the administration, they would have helped him further with his social problems that perhaps affected his education, but as teens talking to the administration, or adults was a