Life and Poetry of Gary Soto

Paper Summary:

Discusses the poet's involvement in the literary world. Themes of his poems, prose and stories centered in his background. Overview of his early life as a child in a poor working class Chicano family. His academic career. Examples several of his poems in detail, cotent & form. His "narrative recollection" prose of the 1980s.

From the Paper:

"Introduction


Gary Soto, currently one of the most recognized Chicano poets in the American literary mainstream (Olivares, 1990), said once that, as a child, he assumed he would marry Mexican poor, work Mexican hours, and in the end die a Mexican death, broke and in despair (Soto, quoted in Lee, 1995, p. 1). For someone who has published over twenty books, including seven volumes of poetry, and achieved numerous honors in literary circles (Lee, 1995), this may seem like a surprising comment, yet his statement is not unexpected considering his background. Because Soto returns to this background repeatedly in his stories and poems (Torres, 1995), it is important to briefly detail the environment that Gary Soto grew up in, and how he became involved in the literary world, before discussing his poetry, prose, and stories."

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