Gary Soto
(1952– )
Because Gary Soto had few books around when he was growing up and little encouragement to read, he was not planning to become an author. Instead, he thought about being a priest, a barber, or maybe a scientist who studies dinosaurs. In fact, he went to college to become a geographer. But when he found a book of poetry in the college library, he was drawn to it. Reading the poetry inside changed his life and inspired him to become an author himself.
Soto writes poetry, novels, and stories for adults and children. He writes about what he knows, mainly what it is like to be a Mexican American boy growing up poor in central California. Soto often writes about enjoyable childhood experiences, but his life was also filled with hardship. He was born on April 12, 1952, in Fresno, which is in the heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley. His grandparents were born in Mexico. Both his parents and grandparents worked as laborers in the fields and factories around Fresno. They picked oranges, grapes, and cotton. Soto himself grew up doing physical labor. He picked grapes, washed cars, mowed lawns, and painted house numbers on curbs.
When Soto was five, he moved with his family to a Mexican American neighborhood, or barrio, on the edge of Fresno. Tragedy struck the family not long after their move, however. Soto's father was killed in an accident at the factory where he worked; he was only twenty-seven years old. Soto's mother had to raise her children alone. They grew up very poor. All of these experiences—living in the barrio, losing his father, being poor—show up in different ways in Soto's stories, poems, and plays.
Although Soto sometimes gets his ideas from the experiences of others, most of his stories and poems are the products of his own imagination and life experience. To create a believable picture of what it was like to grow up in the barrio in Fresno, Soto draws heavily upon his own childhood memories. But the way he carefully blends all of these elements together—the memories of his own childhood, ideas from his imagination, and the experiences of other people—can make it difficult for readers to tell which parts of his stories and poems are autobiographical and which are not.
