Gary soto biography mexican american

American poet and writer

Gary Anthony Soto (born April 12, 1952) is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist.

Gary Soto: Storyteller from the Barrio - librarypoint.org

Life and career

Soto was born to Mexican-American parents Manuel (1910–1957) and Angie Soto (1924-). In his youth, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Soto's father died in 1957, when he was five years old. As his family had to struggle to find work, he had little time or encouragement in his studies.^[1] Soto notes that in spite of his early academic record, while at high school he found an interest in poetry through writers such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, Robert Frost and Thornton Wilder.^[2]

Soto attended Fresno City College and California State University, Fresno, where he earned his B.A.

degree in English in 1974,^[2] studying with poet Philip Levine.^[1] He did graduate work in poetry writing at the University of California, Irvine, where he was the first Mexican-Amer