Topic Page: Soto, Gary
(b. 1952–)
American poet, critic, short story writer
A Chicano and native Californian, Soto earned his B.A. from California State University, Fresno (1974), and his M.F.A. from University of California, Irvine (1976). He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and has produced some seventy volumes of Chicano fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and children's literature, including The Elements of San Joaquin (1977), Black Hair (1985), Who Will Know Us? (1990), New and Selected Poems (1995), A Natural Man (1999), and Nickel and Dime (2000). Lesser Evils (1988) is a collection of essays, and A Summer Life (1990) recounts his early years. His stories for young Chicanos are collected in Baseball in April (1990). For children he has also written The Cat's Meow (1987), the story of a cat who speaks Spanish; Pacific Crossing (1992), about a Chicano boy who spends a summer in Japan with a Japanese family; and Snapshots From the Wedding (1997), the story of a Chicana flower girl at a wedding. Soto has also edited California Childhood: Recollections and Stories of the Golden State (1988) and Pieces of the Heart: New Chicano Fiction (1993). His later works include three young-adult novels, Jesse (2006), Accidental Love (2006), Mercy on These Accidental Chimps (2007), and Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing (2009).
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