Gary Soto
(b. 1952)

When Gary Soto was growing up during the 1950s and 1960s, he noticed that very few books for young people featured Mexican American characters. In the 1970s, when Soto became a writer, he set out to fill that gap. He says, "Because I believe in literature and the depth of living it adds to our years, my task is to start Chicanos reading." He pursues this goal by writing about characters to whom Chicanos can relate. Today, thanks to Soto and others, there exist many books for young people that feature Mexican American characters, use everyday Spanish phrases, and give readers a sense of Chicano culture.

Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California, in 1952. His family had lived in the area since the 1930s, when his grandparents emigrated from Mexico during the Great Depression and found work as farm laborers. When Soto was five years old, his father died as the result of a factory accident. With the help of the children's grandparents, Soto's mother raised young Gary and his siblings. Soto describes his family as illiterate. They kept no books or magazines in the house, and the adults were too busy working to encourage a love of reading in their children.

Soto performed his own share of hard work when he was young. In addition to his household chores, he helped support his family by mowing lawns, picking grapes, painting house numbers on street curbs, and washing cars. As he grew up, Soto wanted at various times to become a priest, a hobo, and a paleontologist. He never dreamed he would become a writer.

After high school, Soto enrolled at California State University at Fresno. He planned to study geography, but then he discovered poetry. One day, when he was supposed to be researching a paper on continental drift, Soto spotted a poetry anthology that looked interesting. He sat down to read, and the poems seemed to leap off the page at him. He spent the next few weeks reading poetry, and felt that his life had been changed.

Excited by this discovery, Soto changed his major from geography to English and, in 1973, started writing poetry. Three years later, he won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum for his collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin.

Soto published his next poetry collection, The Tale of Sunlight, in 1977. His work continued to win many awards, and he became a professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of California.

In 1985, Soto decided to broaden his career as a writer. In Living Up the Street, he wrote short stories about growing up in Fresno. After writing about his youth, Soto found that writing for young people was a natural step. In Baseball in April and Other Stories, Soto depicts daily life in a Mexican American community. He addresses the idea of cultural pride and awareness in many of his stories and novels.

Today, Soto lives with his wife and daughter in Berkeley, California. In addition to his writing career, Soto has been a teacher at the college level since 1976. He is also a volunteer English teacher at his church.

Soto loves to meet his readers. He enjoys playing baseball and basketball with the young people he meets at schools, and he hopes that his visits will excite students about reading and writing. "I figure if they meet me, they will be curious to read what I write," he says. "If that inspires them to read what other people write, all the better!"

Soto works hard to support and encourage young Chicano writers. He says, "I'm 47, and I'm thinking I would like to produce writers who actually could take over my job. Not many Hispanic youth are going into creative writing as a field." To this end, he edits the Chicano Chapbook Series, which presents the works of young Chicano writers. He purchased land for Arté Americas, a Mexican Arts center, and he serves on several boards, including those of La Galería de la Raza and Arté Americas.

After immigrating to the United States, Gary Soto's grandparents became migrant farm workers. These workers move from one region to another, doing temporary, seasonal jobs such as picking crops. Their work is manual and easy to learn.

Migrant farm workers tend to have low wages, poor working conditions, and a lower standard of living than that of other groups of workers. They are constantly moving to find available work, so they do not develop stable relationships with employers. As a result, these workers often remain on the outskirts of communities, and are denied access to local agencies such as health services and the courts.

In the 1960s, conditions began to improve for migrant farm workers when a man named César Chávez worked to organize them into unions. A former migrant worker himself, Chávez dreamed of ending the suffering of farm workers. He organized a union called the United Farm Workers, which has used peaceful strikes and boycotts to gain power. Today, the UFW has about 100,000 members. César Chávez died in 1993, but the UFW continues to work to improve conditions for farm workers.

A  |  B  |  C  |  D  |  E  |  F  |  G  |  H  |  I  |  J  |  K  |  L  |  M
N  |  O  |  P  |  Q  |  R  |  S  |  T  |  U  |  V  |  W  |  X  |  Y  |  Z