Gary Soto, “Black Hair” UA 217-218.

Reader: Barbara Gaietto

(Presentation not made in-class; following is an email report)

Gary Soto was born April 12, 1952, in Fresno, California to Mexican­American parents. His grandparents immigrated from Mexico during the Great Depression and found jobs as farm laborers. Soto grew up poor in the San Joaquin Valley and learned a hard work ethic through chores, such as moving lawns, picking grapes, painting house numbers on street curbs, and washing cars.

When Gary was five his father died as the result of a factory accident. His mother was left to raise her three children ‑ Gary, his older brother, Rick, and his younger sister, Debra ‑ with the help of the children's grandparents.

Soto describes his family as an "illiterate" family. They did not have books and were not encouraged to read. In fact, Gary did not start writing poetry until he was in college. He also is an author of fiction, nonfiction, and picture books.

Soto earned an English degree at California State University at Fresno in 1974. He continued his education to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of California at Irvine. While working on his graduate work, Soto married Carolyn Oda, the daughter of Japanese‑American farmers.

After receiving his master's degree, Soto became writer‑inresidence at San Diego State University and a lecturer in Chicano studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1977, he became an associate professor in both the Chicano studies and English departments at UC, Berkeley, where he has been a senior lecturer since 1992.

Soto has assumed the role of a full‑time writer since 1993. He enjoys writing in the summer when he is not teaching. He has turned his garage into a study and writes there in the morning. When asked by children if he writes a title before he writes a poem, Soto responds that he usually comes up with a title halfway through a poem.

Gary Soto's hobbies and interests include reading, traveling, playing basketball, Karate, Aztec dancing, teaching English at his church, and eating at new restaurants with his wife, Carolyn, and their daughter, Mariko. He also has two cats, Corky and Sharkie.

GARY SOTO, born and raised in Fresno California, is the author of ten poetry collections for adults, most notably NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His recollections LIVING UP THE STREET received a Before Columbus Foundation 1985 AMERICAN BOOK AWARD. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Nation, Plouqhshares, The Iowa Review, Ontario Review and most frequently Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in Poets in Person. He is one of the youngest poets to appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. He has received the Discovery-The Nation Prize, the U.S. Award of the International Poetry Forum, The California Library Association's John and Patricia Beatty Award [twice], a Recogniton of Merit from the Claremont Graduate School for Baseball in April, the Silver Medal from The Commonwealth Club of California, and the Tomás Rivera Prize, in addition to fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (twice), and the California Arts Council. For ITVS, he produced the film The Pool Party, which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal. For the The Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto for an opera titled Nerd-landia.  In 1999 he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the PEN Center West Book Award for Petty Crimes.  He serves as Young People's Ambassador for the California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) and the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). He lives in Berkeley, CA.