A collection of eleven short stories focusing on the everyday adventures of Hispanic young people growing up in Fresno, California.

When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he struggles to find a place for himself as a Mexican American living in a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, California. A junior college dropout, 19-year-old Eddie is trying to support himself in this story set in the barrio of Fresno, California. Annotation. For Eddie there isn't much to do in his rundown neighborhood but eat, sleep, watch out for drive-bys, and just try to get through each...

Chato decides to throw a "pachanga" for his friend Novio Boy, who has never had a birthday party, but when it is time to party, Novio Boy cannot be found.

Twenty-one poems about growing up in an Hispanic neighborhood, highlighting the delights in such everyday items as sprinklers, the park, the library, and pomegranates.

Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Mendoza, an aspiring basketball player, must come to terms with his divided loyalties when he moves from the Hispanic inner city to a white suburban neighborhood.

Presents ten short stories for teens that portray the struggles and hopes of young Mexican Americans.

In order to look more like his father, Ricky borrows a mustache from a school costume, but when he loses it on the way home, his father comes up with a replacement.

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his listener to a ground-level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold," the taps of his shoes, and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath...

Maya, the flower girl, describes a Mexican American wedding through snapshots of the day's events, beginning with the procession to the altar and ending with her sleeping after the dance.