Living Up The Street

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Often, what people know about authors is a combination of what literary critics and readers say, along with what they say about themselves. Who is Gary Soto? According to critics, what are some of the characteristics of Soto’s writing? What are some common themes? What does Soto say about his own work?

Teaching Suggestion: Soto's writing style is not explicit. He expresses his themes through the details he presents as wells as the details he leaves out, leaving readers to access his writing and his ideas on their own terms. Providing literary context for the author’s work, along with the writer’s own ideas on what he hopes to accomplish, will provide readers with a foundational understanding of Soto’s work and legacy. Use these or other resources plus discussion to prime readers to look for specific writing techniques and themes in Living Up the Street.

• Soto’s Poetry Foundation biography includes literary insights as well as his accomplishments. It also includes some of the author’s insights about his work.
• Soto’s website includes a bio, frequently asked questions, excerpts from his poetry, and a recent one-act play.
• Episode #44 of Freedom Writers Podcast features an interview with Gary Soto. The first 15 minutes are especially useful for this exercise. Encourage students to note how the interviewer tries to frame Soto’s story and personal identity. Compare the interviewer’s framing with the way in which Soto identifies and talks about himself.

2.  What is poetry? What is prose? How are they the same? How are they different?

Teaching Suggestion: Soto began his writing career as a poet before expanding to other forms of writing. His writing style reflects his origins as a poet. Providing students with in-depth understanding of the similarities and differences between the two forms of writing will support literary analysis. This is also a good opportunity to use paired texts, especially poems, to provide students with examples of the characteristics. 

• This in-depth article on Writers.com explains the differences between poetry and prose with examples.
• A brief article from MasterClass focuses on prose but uses poetry as a point of comparison. It also provides examples.

Short Activity

Take some time to explore the complex history of colonial Spain’s impact on the Americas, especially in the West, where much of the United States is former Spanish and Mexican territory. How do the historical forces of government, migration, economy, culture, and labor impact Gary Soto’s 1960s California? How do they still impact Chicanos today?

Teaching Suggestion: Students might work individually or in groups. Teachers might cooperate with the history or social studies department to help cover the vast socio-historical context for Soto’s work. Helping students understand that Mexican people lived in the United States before the states in the West were admitted to the union is crucial to understanding Soto’s musings on Poverty, Race, and Identity. This history impacts how their descendants (Chicanos, or Americans with Mexican ancestry) view themselves in relationship to the United States today. Chicano history is also closely linked to economy and labor, and Soto’s grappling with his identity is directly linked to those aspects of Chicano history as well.

• The Chicano Movement in Texas is a 10-minute documentary that explores the complex history of Mexicans in America, the civil rights challenges, and labor and economy movements from the mid-1800s to the 1980s. This is an award-winning student presentation from National History Day.
• The Impact of the Chicano Movement is another student documentary that focuses on the East LA student walkouts that changed education for Chicano students across the US during the 1960s. 
• “A History of Mexican Americans in California” is a National Park Service resource that provides a comprehensive textual history of Mexican people in California from 1846 to the present. Each of the six pages focuses on a different historical period. This breakdown is perfect for a jigsaw activity in the classroom: Students work in small groups; each group takes a historical period, reads about it, and reports the important points to the class.
• “Mexican Americans Are Still Fighting for Land They Were Promised Generations Ago” is a Nightline presentation that explores the denied promises from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.