California Authors

Leila’s parents came to America in hopes of a better life for them and their family, but having a better life once you get here is not always the case. When I read this passage I get the sense of having to survive. The necessity of it seems so clear as Leila describes her mom eating alone in the kitchen “sucking out the lesser parts”.   The memory she has of this scene that she says “is a happy one, that quickly turned sad” is maybe her trying to say that it is a happy memory but it was them just trying to survive. All you have in that real world is your family, and surviving is what you do. The blood of the family is the mother and the bones the father. Don’t waste any of the bird, including the blood and bones, if you do you are wasting your family, the hard work spent.
In just the twenty pages or so that make up the story of Nancy Flores we go through his life span of from the age of 12 all the way to his twenties. His adolescence, puberty, teens, becoming a man.   Most people would have changed a lot throughout   these years and you do see that as you read his story.   When he was younger it was girls he was interested in and girls who had his attention and focus but now as he is older he tells us “Evert subject had become like meeting a new girls and there wasn’t a subject I didn’t want to learn”. To me, this was Gilb’s way of telling us that yes, I still have my interests but they have changed. This one simple sentence is his way of telling us he is growing up, become someone else. Yet, by saying “like meeting a new girl” in the sentence he is still the same person deep down. Those feelings he gets when meeting a girl, like Nancy Flores, are now feelings that he has towards school.
Living Up the Street was a very detail oriented book.   Gary Soto makes you feel as though you really are there in the moment with him.   In this scene where him and Jackie have snuck into a store that is being renovated he describes the details of being excited, nervous, daring, not...