I became immersed in this biography about the life and works of Gary Soto, written by a writer who is himself a literary scholar (and poet): Professor Ron McFarland (U of Idaho, English and MFA programs). I went to online sources to read Soto’s poems for myself, to understand why some Hispanic critics say he abandoned his Chicano roots, became a more universal literary voice. I think he’s both. Soto has become my favorite living poet as a result.
I’m not Chicano, but in my 50s roots as a teenager in eastern Montana there were violent “rumbles” between migrant beet picking family’s sons and scores of local public school white male teens. Billings, Montana was the third worst city of its size in the US for “gang violence,” according to FBI files. I stopped eating grapes for years in support of Cezar Chavez’s unionizing efforts in California. My family was not terribly “poor” but I had to get an after school job to support my needs when I was 16. I was taught to respect work, and all peoples regardless of culture or skin color. But I knew nothing about the home lives of the few Mexican kids who enrolled in our local parochial school.
Soto’s poetry makes real what real poverty, real labor, real barrio life involve. But with a sweetness and charm that brought tears to me as I tried to read his poem, “Oranges,” to my wife. His images are unique in all the annals of poetry in my view. Fog perched in trees waiting to wrap him like a scarf; peeling an orange in young brown hands might look to a viewer like he was making fire (with his first heart throb girlfriend nearby). He and his buddy lived in a town that was made with what God had left over after making hell. His humor romps through his poems.
McFarland seems to have gathered and sifted through every written comment about Soto’s life, children’s books, prose and poetry. Amazing sleuthing. He clearly frames it all for a reader, either another scholar like himself or a casual reader of poetry like me.
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