Living Up the Street

First edition

Living up the Street is a book written by Gary Soto. It was published in 1985. The book is a collection of short stories, recollections of growing up Chicano in Fresno, California. It won a Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award in 1985.

In these "narrative recollections" poet Gary Soto reflects on his Mexican American childhood in the ethnically mixed laboring-class neighborhoods of Fresno, California. His was a life lived at the margins—economic margins and cultural margins. In these recollections of family relationships, youthful mischief-making, farm and factory jobs, adolescent rebellion, and the transition to professional writing Soto subtly and humorously draws attention to the discontinuities between the lives of Chicanos and Anglos.


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