Gary Soto
Gary Soto’s work is abstract in many ways but still understandable to any age group out there. His poetry seems so simple yet complex in every way possible. Writing poetry doesn’t necessarily take the smartest person, but someone that can really express there feelings and write from the heart. Soto writes an assortment of pieces anywhere from, a deep love poem to a nail biting sports game! He is also a favorite in school, knowing that he writes many poems about schooling and teachers, so yeah…we can relate.
As a young lad he worked in the fields of San Joaquin Valley with his father. He was born and raised in Fresno, California with his older brother Rick and his younger sister, Debra on April 1952. His father was a pure blooded Mexican and his mother was Caucasian. So, as you would guess Gary Soto was Mexican-American, the same as me! When he hit the age of 15, he wasn’t interested in writing, nor school. Little did he know he would become a famous writer someday…
In his college days, he attended the University of California, Berkeley. And took English as his major and earned his masters degree in “Fine Arts”. After graduation, he became an assistance college professor at Berkeley. From there he took off writing poem after poem, book after book. His life was now devoted to writing full time, this was a dream he thought he would never live. Although at the age of 18, he had a GPA of 1.6, which is really low (almost to the point of a challenged brain)! That’s a direct sign of a poet, they have there mind off in another world, pondering ideas.
Even a couple of movies have been made into a motion picture like, “The no Guitar Blues” which was made into a short film, never really that popular. “Buried onions” was another novel that was planned to be made for the past 8 years, but they eventually called it off, he was completely angered, yet not discouraged.