Gary Soto Readings

To start, I really enjoyed the short story "Like Mexicans". I liked how Soto brought the characters from innocent, literal understanding of life through complicated adulthood. I found the relationship between the narrator and his best friend to be very relatable. At a young age, we all tend to see the world through a simplistic filter. We are taught to believe certain things that dictate our lives and we tend not to question or analyze these teachings. The narrator is told to marry a Mexican girl and his friend is to marry an Okie. Both boys accept that this is normal because those are their respective "people" but it does not interfere with their relationship. As for the food, the narrator describes all of the differences between the boys and their lifestyles, the orange seems to be the unifying factor, the only similarity between the two. His mother seems to be over occupied or exhausted by cooking, giving insight to the family dynamic. As the narrator grows up, ethnicity begins to confuse him as he struggles to realize that he and his true love are not united by culture but rather by economic status, and he soon realizes that this was clear to others as well. The sushi makes him slightly uncomfortable, it is no longer a unifying factor, and it is the "poorness" of the family that allows him to settle in. Honestly, I was a little confused about the cat story line, so I would like to see how others interpreted their meaning.
As for the poetry, admittedly, I was never really taught how to read/ interpret poetry, at least in a classroom setting, but I did enjoy these poems as well. My favorite was "Oranges" because of the delightful innocence of the young boy and his first big interaction with the girl he likes. Money again plays a large role in the comfort of the relationship, but it is the treats that bring both characters joy. "Salt" similarly used food as a way to express financial status. Lastly, "The Estonian Comes to Dinner" was also kind of confusing for me, but what I gathered (which may be completely wrong) is that the narrator is dreaming of a time of endless food which evokes pleasure and happiness, but in reality, food is scarce and unavailable evoking sadness and disappointment and this comparison of fantasy and reality signifies a time of financial hardship.