Soto attended Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, where he earned his B.A. degree in English in 1974, studying with poet Philip Levine
Philip Levine
Philip Levine was an American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for more than thirty years in the English department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well. He served on the Board of Chancellors of th…
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine is a public research university located in Irvine, California. It is one of the 10 campuses in the University of California system. UC Irvine offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and professional degrees. The university is classifie…
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What were Gary Soto's accomplishments?
He has received many awards for his work as a children's author, including awards from the National Education Association and the PEN Center, and the Tomás Rivera Book Award.
What are 4 Interesting facts about Gary Soto?
Reader viewHe was born April 12 in 1952.He was raised in Fresno , California.In 1997 he was NBC's person of the week.4.In 1993 he received the Andrew Camegie Award.In 1999 he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation.He took his first poetry class in 1972.More items...
How did Gary Soto get into writing?
After transferring to California State University, Soto began publishing his first poems. His first collection of poetry, The Elements of San Joaquin, described the hardships faced by Mexican Americans in central California. The book received many accolades, and began Soto's career as a professional writer.
What was Gary Soto's first collection of stories for children?
BaseballGary Soto began writing stories for children and published his first collection, Baseball in April, in 1990. In interviews, Soto has said that he began writing stories for children because he wanted Mexican American children to see themselves in books.
How many books did Gary Soto write?
Baseball in April and Other Stori...1990Tomando Partido\/ Taking Sid...1991Buried Onions1997The afterlife2003Too many tamales1992A Summer Life1990Gary Soto/Books
What is a quote from Gary Soto?
In a world where sparrows work hard. To prove there is enough.”
Who was Gary Soto inspired by?
(1899–1961) and John Steinbeck (1902–1968). Soto was especially inspired by one book in particular, To Sir with Love, a novel written by E. R. Braithwaite (1920–) about a teacher who devotes himself to students at a school in the East End working-class district of London, England.
What type of poetry is Gary Soto known for?
free verseAgain, Soto is very much a contemporary American poet, writing autobiographically in free verse and using images that are drawn from ordinary experience and popular culture. His sympathies for the poor are very typical of contemporary writers from ethnic or underprivileged backgrounds.
What is the theme of the school play by Gary Soto?
This story from Gary Soto is about facing fear. The protagonist is scared of forgetting his lines in his sixth-grade play. In addition to worrying about being laughed at, another student has threatened to “bury his face in the ground” if he messes up.
Where did Gary Soto go to high school?
University of California Irvine1974–1976California State University...1974Fresno City CollegeRoosevelt High SchoolGary Soto/Education
What is Gary Soto important life events?
Apr 12, 1952. Gary Soto is born. ... 1957. Death of his father. ... 1970. Graduates Roosevelt High School. ... May 19, 1974. Graduates Fresno State College. ... May 24, 1975. Gary Soto Gets Married. ... Dec 21, 1977. First Book is Published. ... 1978. Soto Has a Daughter. ... Feb 13, 1978. Gets Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.More items...
What did Gary Soto want?
Soto claimed, in his BookList biography, that he began writing for children because he wanted to "start Chicanos reading." He also wanted to remedy the fact that there were very few books available to young people that featured Mexican Americans.
What are 3 important facts about Gary Soto?
Interesting Gary Soto Facts: Gary Soto was nominated for the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for The Tale of Sunlight - a poetry collection. Gary Soto won the 1976 United States Award of the International Poetry Forum with his first poetry collection titled The Elements of San Joaquin.
What is Gary Soto important life events?
Apr 12, 1952. Gary Soto is born. ... 1957. Death of his father. ... 1970. Graduates Roosevelt High School. ... May 19, 1974. Graduates Fresno State College. ... May 24, 1975. Gary Soto Gets Married. ... Dec 21, 1977. First Book is Published. ... 1978. Soto Has a Daughter. ... Feb 13, 1978. Gets Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.More items...
How old is Gary Soto today?
70 years (April 12, 1952)Gary Soto / Age
Where did Gary Soto go to high school?
University of California Irvine1974–1976California State University...1974Fresno City CollegeRoosevelt High SchoolGary Soto/Education
Where did Soto go to college?
Soto transferred to California State University, Fresno, and in 1972 he took his very first poetry-writing class. From 1972 until 1973 he studied with noted Detroit, Michigan, poet Philip Levine (1928–), 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 1974, 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. In 1977, with master's degree in hand, Soto began teaching Chicano studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He remained at the university until 1993, as an associate professor of both Chicano studies and English.
What school did Soto go to?
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.
What was Soto's job?
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.
Why did Soto write for children?
Soto claimed, in his BookList biography, that he began writing for children because he wanted to "start Chicanos reading." He also wanted to remedy the fact that there were very few books available to young people that featured Mexican Americans. As Rudolfo Anaya remarked in World Literature Today, "Entire generations of Mexican American schoolchildren went through elementary school without ever having read a story about their culture and their communities." Soto set out to change all that in his first collection of stories for children, called Baseball in April, published in 1990.
How many books does Soto write?
Soto, however, does not see himself as strictly a Chicano author. True, in his over twenty books of poetry and prose for adults and in over thirty books for younger readers, he focuses on the daily trials and tribulations of Spanish-speaking Americans.
Where did Gary Soto live?
Gary Soto was born on April 12, 1952, the second child of Manuel and Angie Soto. 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.
Where did Angie Soto live after Manuel Soto died?
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.
Where was Gary Soto born?
1952–. read poems by this poet. Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California, on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican-American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motivated as a child, ...
What is Gary Soto's poetry?
Of his work, the writer Joyce Carol Oates has said, “Gary Soto’s poems are fast, funny, heartening, and achingly believable, like Polaroid love letters, or snatches of music heard out of a passing car; patches of beauty like patches of sunlight; the very pulse of a life.”. Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County ...
How many books has Soto written?
Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); a memoir, Living Up the Street (Strawberry Hill Press, 1985); and numerous young adult and children’s books.
Where does Soto live?
He lives in Northern California. poems. texts by.
When was Soto's first poem published?
His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. Since then, Soto has published numerous books of poetry, including You Kiss by th’ Book: New Poems from Shakespeare’s Line (Chronicle Books, 2016), ...
Who did Soto read?
Some of his favorites were by American authors such as Ernest Hemingway
Where did Manuel Soto live after his death?
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. "Our shelves were not lined with books," Soto told Quill editors, "they were lined with menudo." Menudo is a type of spicy Mexican soup.
What was the impact of the Soto family?
The impact was also economic, forcing Soto along with the rest of his family into whatever jobs they could get. Sometimes this meant migrant farm labor and its hazardous exposure to toxic chemicals. Soto was an indifferent student in high school, with a D grade average and a preference for spending his time as a novio — a lover boy — on the school playground. His family had little interaction with the world of education. "We had our own culture which was more like the culture of poverty," Soto said in an interview with the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
How many children's books did Soto write?
Soto was always a very prolific writer, but after he left teaching in 1993, his pace picked up even more. By the mid-1990s, he was producing as many as three children's books per year. In addition, he dabbled in all types of writing for young readers of all ages. There are books of poetry, including A Fire in My Hands (1991), Canto Familiar (1995), and Fearless Fernie (2002); picture books for very young children, such as Too Many Tamales (1992), If the Shoe Fits (2002), and the Chato the Cat tales; as well as chapter books for kids in middle school, which include The Skirt (1992), The Pool Party (1993), and Boys at Work (1995). Soto also writes young adult novels aimed at older teens. As Susan Marie Swanson wrote in a Riverbank Review profile, "A child could grow up on Soto's books."
Why did Soto write for children?
Soto claimed, in his BookList biography, that he began writing for children because he wanted to "start Chicanos reading." He also wanted to remedy the fact that there were very few books available to young people that featured Mexican Americans. As Rudolfo Anaya remarked in World Literature Today, "Entire generations of Mexican American schoolchildren went through elementary school without ever having read a story about their culture and their communities." Soto set out to change all that in his first collection of stories for children, called Baseball in April, published in 1990.
What was the first book of Soto's poetry?
That same year he branched out and published his first book of prose, called Living Up the Street: Narrative Recollections. Considering Soto's poems often had a storytelling feel to them, the jump to prose seemed natural. And, just as in his poetry, Soto mined his childhood memories of life in Fresno to fuel his work. Living Up the Street, was followed by three other collections of autobiographical essays: Small Faces (1986), Lesser Evils: Ten Quartets (1988), and A Summer Life (1990). In 2001, several of these essays, along with some new material, were compiled in a single volume called The Effects of Knut Hamsun on a Fresno Boy.
What is Soto's poetry?
Soto's poetry for children is much lighter in tone than his adult works; as he does in his autobiographical prose, he celebrates small moments from his childhood that can be understood by any young person growing up anywhere. For example, he writes about such everyday activities as running through a lawn sprinkler on a sunny, summer afternoon, going on a first date, or feeding the birds. Some of his middle school novels, such as Summer on Wheels (1995) are also lighter fare and show off the silly, quirky side of Soto. On the other hand, several of Soto's novels are hard-hitting, with characters facing some very tough issues. In Taking Sides (1991), for example, eighth-grader Lincoln Mendoza moves from his inner-city neighborhood to a suburb of Fresno that is predominantly Anglo, or white; as a result his loyalties for his old friends are challenged.
what is gary soto known for?
Gary Soto won the 1976 United States Award of the International Poetry Forum with his first poetry collection titled The Elements of San Joaquin.
What are some of Gary Soto's most famous works?
Gary Soto's notable works include Petty Crimes, New and Selected Poems, and Living Up the Streets.
When did Gary Soto win the American Book Award?
Gary Soto's memoir titled Living Up the Street won the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 1985.
