`` Mexicans Begin Jogging `` And Small Town With One Road

Gary Soto was born on April 12, 1952. He was raised in Fresno, California. Married to Carolyn Oda, he’s now 63 years old. Gary had a tough childhood. His father died when he was five years old. Soto received very little motivation from his family. As a result of this, he did poorly in school. But, during high school he found an interest in poetry. Soto received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Film Excellence when he produced the film “The Pool Party”. He also attended Fresno City College, and California State University. There, he earned his B.A degree in English. At the University of California, Irvine, Soto did graduate work in poetry. He was also the first Mexican-American to earn an M.F.A. in 1976. Gary Soto had a hard childhood but made it up through his achievements in writing and school.

In the short story Mr. Soto exclaims when he was younger he pushed a lawn mower, door to door trying to find someone who would pay him to cut their grass. At the time he did not know that his area was in the lower-class bracket, “It struck me like a ball. They were poor, but I didn’t even recognize them. I left the projects and tried houses with a little luck, and began to wonder if they too housed the poor” (101). This is significant because later he speaks about how he was so oblivious to how he grew up. Later in this childhood story he stated that he wanted to become a hobo since he thought there was no jobs for him in the world since he did not want to work like his father. He exclaimed that his dad would come home with blistery hands, sit down their living room chair and stare at the television for the rest of the night. At the end of this story he starts talking about how he became who he is now, and why he fell into his career. “It’s been twenty years since I went door to door. Now I am living this other life that seems a dream. How did I get here? What line on my palm arched in a small fortune? I sit before students, before grade books, before other professors talking about books they’ve yet to write, so surprised that I’m far from that man on the sidewalk” (101). This quote from “To Be A Man,” is a very smart and somewhat humorous line, because Mr. Soto realizes that he could have easily been a hobo on that

Richard Blanco, a famous Cuban-American poet who became the first Latin American, immigrant, and openly gay Inaugural Poet in 2013, wrote a variety of works based off his life and all the things that were going on in it. In Richard Blanco’s, “El Florida Room” and “The First Real San Giving Day”, Blanco provides the readers with a look into his personal life with information about his family and some characteristics of his life. Dealing with many different societal issues due to his culture and even his sexual orientation, Blanco describes what his life was truly like, more specifically geared towards his culture; being Cuban-American. Through his use of a chronological storytelling in his memoir and a reflection on the past in his poem,

Gary Soto’s tone is filled with resentment for the evil deed he has accomplished. Realizing his actions and seeking forgiveness, this shows how innocent and spirit-minded he tended to be as a 6-year-old boy. It’s essential for people to sort their evil doings and aim to make up for them. This will make you feel better and not be loaded with torment and torture of disastrous ponderings.

Pat Mora is an award-winning writer that bases most her poems on tough cultural challenges and life as a Mexican American. She was born in a Spanish speaking home in El Paso, Texas. Mora is proud to be a Hispanic writer and demonstrates how being culturally different in America is not easy. She explains this through her experiences and the experience other’s. In her poems “Elena”, “Sonrisas”, and “Fences”, Mora gives you a glimpse of what life as a Mexican American is; their hardships, trials, strength that make them who they are.

Richard Blanco’s diverse background makes him relatable for people of multinational upbringings. His writing thoroughly appealed to me because he did such a good job capturing the emotions of a child coming into a new world. Having experienced that, I wanted to see if I could have that effect on people. I used some of the techniques that Blanco uses, in my poem “New Identity”, to familiarize the reader with what he has been through. Richard Blanco accustoms the reader to his experiences by using figurative language, diverse diction, and allusions.

In “Illegal Alien” Pat Mora writes about the problem of the difficulty people have communicating when they are of different backgrounds. For years now people have been judged by their skin color, their race, or where the originally come from. In “Illegal Alien” Pat Mora gives us a good example of this as the character in her poem goes through this trial of being from both the Mexican and the American cultures. Pat Mora indicates her difficulties that she is going through being born into two different cultures.

Similarly, the poem by Jose B. Gonzalez, Autobrownography of a New England Latino, illustrates the difficulties that Gonzalez lived due to being a brown Latino. He experiences segregation and racism, but fights to become an educated man despite his color and social class. Gonzalez, like

When Gary was five his father died as the result of a factory accident, and his mother was left to raise her three children with the help of her parents. Soto describes his family as an "illiterate" family. They did not have books and were not encouraged to read. In fact, Gary did not start writing poetry until he was in college. He also is an author of

In the poem “Behind Grandma’s House”, Gary Soto writes about an experience he had as a young boy. He speaks of himself as being a nerdy Spanish boy who wants attention. He screams out for attention by acting out in negative ways. Most know, to bring attention to one’s self, one can acquire it by acting negatively or positively, but negative attention brings punishment. Soto obtains his grandmothers attention at the end of the poem, but he may have regretted it. Gary Soto’s “Behind Grandma’s House” is a 1952 free verse poem that uses imagery to suggest the speaker’s perspective of the story.

The speaker addresses the dilemma of being neither Mexican nor American, of traveling the trajectory between both nationalities. Because he its color of the skin and lived in a border culture, it was often assumed that he was not an American. The speaker is a men looking for freedom and a better future, an element so well-known that he is willing to risk everything to achieve his goal. There is no need for Soto to run because he is an American. Soto’s poem is emotionally and a practical clever story that many Mexicans Americans relate too.

Gary Soto, who among many things was a Mexican-American poet, many times wrote about what he knew best: his life. Growing up as a Chicano in America in the 50s and 60s, Soto worked in fields as a laborer from a young age. It is evident that coming from a Hispanic working class family greatly influenced his poem “Ambition”. As he is known for, Soto's poem is filled with imagery of everyday life, while harping on important details and themes of things that he may have seen around him., but in this instance, there was a bit of confusion. To begin with, the poem “Ambition” starts off with the line "For years our ambition was to eat/Chicken"(1-2). Without further analysis, at this point the reader is most likely confused, much like I was. Chicken? How could eating be one's goal, one's aspiration in life? The word ambition is usually associated with lofty goals. It would not seem out of place to say that one's ambition was to become a doctor or to make a better life for oneself. So the speaker in the poem could not truly believe that all that he wanted in life was to eat chicken. The outlandishness of this statement seems to be the speaker pointing huge arrows towards places in the poem that invoke deeper meaning to

Gray soto went to Fresno City College and California State University, where he earned his B.A degree in English in 1974. He did his studying with poet Philip levine. He did his graduate work in poetry writing at the University of California,Irvine. Where he was the first Mexican-American to earn a M.F.A (Master of Fine Arts). Gary Soto was a professor at at University of California, Berkeley and at University of California,

grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in the industrial part of a town called Fresno.

I enjoy reading poetry, one poem that I just read was by Pat Mora called”Immigrants.” Pat Writes poetry, and children’s literature. According to wikedia, “she is opposed to American monoculture, and is concerned with preserving the Mexican American culture. This is reflected in much of her writings’. The author of the poem wants to preserve her cultural heritage as well as embracing being an American. While reading her biography, I could see the reflection of this in this poem. How does one feel about who they are, and where they came from? This poem is just about that what it means to come from a foreign country to America, and embracing the American culture. How would you feel to come to a foreign land, and have to start all over again? This poem is a way she put her feelings towards knowing who she is, and losing where she came from.