When was gary soto born

But, through crisp, clear imagery and his true-to-life characters, Soto connects with readers of all ages and backgrounds. As he explained in his Scholastic Booklist biography, "Even though I write a lot about life in the barrio, I am really writing about the feelings and experiences of most American kids.

The family lived in Fresno, California, and like many Mexican Americans Soto's parents and grandparents worked as laborers in the surrounding San Joaquin Valley, the agricultural center of the state. Typical jobs included picking oranges, cotton, and grapes for very little pay, or working in the often dangerous packing houses of local businesses, such as the Sunmaid Raisin Company. When Soto was just five years old, his father was killed in an accident while working at Sunmaid.

Manuel Soto's death had a devastating effect on his family, both emotionally and economically. Gary was hit particularly hard and spent years brooding over the accident. And Angie Soto was left with three small children to raise: oldest son Rick, middle child Gary, and Debra, the youngest.

After Manuel Soto's death, the family moved to a rough neighborhood in an industrial area of Fresno. To make ends meet, Angie Soto and the children's grandparents took what jobs they could find. As Gary and his siblings grew older they, too, worked in the fields and factories of Fresno. Regardless, the family struggled. Working left little time for school, and when Soto did go, he made very poor marks. While attending Roosevelt High School, he maintained a D average, and spent more time chasing girls than doing his homework.

Soto received little encouragement from home to do better. As he explained in interviews, education was simply not part of their culture—the culture of poverty. I think like a poet, and behave like a poet. Although Soto was not encouraged to read at home, he was exploring the world of books on his own at the school library. Some of his favorites were by American authors such as Ernest Hemingway.

Through bargaining agreements, contract negotiations, and other tactics, its members work to improve the wages and working conditions for all agricultural workers in America. This includes fighting for such basic rights as a living wage, access to clean drinking water and bathrooms, and safe working conditions. Following World War II —45 , there was a shortage of field laborers in California and Texas where agriculture was a key industry.

As a result, an agreement was made between Mexico and the United States, where U. Eventually, growers became dependent on these seasonal laborers, who were willing to take on back-breaking work for little pay, work that most Americans were not willing to do. Because they were not citizens of the United States, because they usually spoke little English, and because they were not organized under a union, conditions for Mexican laborers were poor.

Their temporary housing often lacked indoor plumbing, and children were often forced to work in the fields in order to help their family survive. By the mids, there were hundreds of thousands of laborers living and working in such substandard conditions. Their first combined effort involved organizing Chicano and Filipino workers in the California grape-picker strike of — After a bitter battle between growers and workers, the UFWOC secured contracts with two of the largest grape growers in California; the contracts included among other things, a promise to ban the use of harmful pesticides, access to washing facilities, and rest periods.

This was first successful bargaining agreement between farm laborers and growers in the United States. Since then the organization has continued to fight for the rights of workers in all types of agricultural industries, from grapes to lettuce, from strawberries to mushrooms.

Today, according to the UFWA Web site, farm workers who are employed by companies that accept UFWA contracts enjoy decent pay, family medical care, pensions, and other similar benefits. Unfortunately, the site also reports that the majority of farm laborers in California and the rest of the country still do not enjoy these basic protections.

This means that the battle continues, carried on by the next generation. Soto was especially inspired by one book in particular, To Sir with Love, a novel written by E. Braithwaite — about a teacher who devotes himself to students at a school in the East End working-class district of London, England.

Reading that novel prompted Soto to enroll at Fresno City College after graduation. He was not sure exactly what he would study in college, perhaps geography or paleontology the study of fossils. Soto, however, was sure that he did not want to be a farm worker. And, although he loved to read, the thought of becoming a writer did not even cross his mind. But, once again, a chance encounter in the library would change Soto's course. When he was nineteen and in his second year at Fresno College, the young student discovered a collection of contemporary poetry.

As Soto remarked to Quill, "I thought that poetry had to be about mountains and streams and birds and stuff. As Soto further explained, "Field wrote in a voice that was real common and I didn't know poetry could be like that.

Soto transferred to California State University, Fresno, and in he took his very first poetry-writing class. From until he studied with noted Detroit, Michigan, poet Philip Levine — , who was known for his poems about working-class people.

Levine taught Soto not only how to take apart and analyze poems, but also about the nuts and bolts of writing his own poetry. In , Soto graduated from Cal State with a bachelor's degree in English.

The following year he began working on a master's degree in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine. That same year he married Carolyn Oda, the daughter of Japanese American farmers.

The couple has one daughter, Mariko Heidi Soto. You're in this dream of cotton plants. You raise a hoe, swing, and the first weeds Fall with a sigh. You take another step, Chop, and the sigh comes again, The clouds shouldered a path up the mountains East of Ocampo, and then descended, Scraping their bellies gray on the cracked shingles of slate. Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars To live.

Five for a softball. Four for a book, A handful of ones for coffee and two sweet rolls, Bus fare, rosin for your mother's violin. Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge Gary Soto.

If anything, Soto turned more and more inward as the years went by. He published three books of essays -- "narrative recollections," he called them -- in the eighties: Living Up the Street, Small Faces, and Lesser Evils.

Writing prose, he discovered a new freedom. Unexpectedly, he began receiving fan letters, one or two a week, from teenaged Mexican Americans, which convinced him to try writing for children and young adults. He has also produced three short films for Mexican-American kids. Yet paradoxically, Soto can't quite shake the insecurity of being a pocho from Fresno. He follows a comfortable daily routine at his house in Berkeley, writing in the morning, tackling correspondence in the afternoon, then working out he has a black belt in tae kwon do and is now studying aikido ; in the evening, he spends time with his wife of twenty years, Carolyn, whom he met in college, and their daughter, Mariko.

By all measures, Soto should feel assured about his place in the world, but he still doubts his ability to write, still fears that his latest poem will be his last good one -- anxieties exemplified by a game he used to play with his wife:. I would decide, more or less, which poems to save by how many nods she gave me. But I'd be so nervous, waiting for her reaction.

I have to keep reminding myself that after all these books over all these years, I must be doing something right. Skip to Main Content. Content Top Issue