Living Up The Street

Poverty is a constant theme in many of the stories. In the first half of the book, Soto lives in the impoverished industrial side of Fresno, where the houses are dilapidated and set against the dirty, concrete backdrop of factories. His single mother works tiring hours picking grapes and laboring in the nearby factories to provide her family with the necessities of life. Although Soto enjoys his childhood playing with neighbors and getting into fights, as an adult he says that the constant threat of hunger he faced as a child caused him to have a fear of poverty—a fear that a financial crisis would hit and everything would be lost.

For Soto, poverty is intrinsically linked to his perception of race. Growing up, Soto is surrounded by Mexican, Chicano (American but with Mexican roots), and Okie (poor farmers who fled the plains during the Great Depression to settle in California) families. These families all live in poverty; meanwhile, Soto sees affluent white families on TV. In this way, Soto begins to equate poverty with race: Mexicans are poor and white people are wealthy. He vocalizes this idea when he tells his mother that he won’t pick grapes with her anymore because he doesn’t want to “stoop like a Mexican” (106). For him, being Mexican is equated with hard physical labor and little pay. He again vocalizes this idea while working at the tire factory, another physically demanding job that employs mostly “Mexican or black” workers. He says that given his background, he “imagined a dark fate: To marry Mexican poor, work Mexican hours, and in the end die a Mexican death, broke and in despair” (123). Here again, he uses “Mexican” as a negative adjective implying poverty, terrible working conditions, and hopelessness.

Soto identifies as being Chicano because his family is Mexican, but he was born in America. In this way, he often fights between his perception of what it means to be Mexican versus American, and what it means for him personally. As a result, he often feels conflicted about his identity and who he wants to be. Whether during his childhood or adulthood, Soto wants wealth; he often tries to think of ways to earn enough money to have food to eat and a little luxury. As a child he thinks that if only he changes his habits, he can be more like the white families on TV and therefore richer. However, after running away from home, he briefly embraces the idea that he can only have money if he works hard physically. But by the end of the book, Soto follows his dream of writing poetry and teaching and makes a living from these things. However, this evolution of Soto’s perception of how to make money intrinsically reveals the evolution of his self-identity. Soto goes from disowning his Mexican roots and longing to be white to embracing his gifts and realizing that more than anything he identifies with being a writer.