Nickel and Dime
by Gary Soto
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"I'm outta here! I got a future!" crows Roberto Silva when he is down-sized out of his job as a security guard at a bank in Oakland. But Roberto's future isn't the one he was looking forward to. This is the 1990s, and upward mobility in the city requires resources that Roberto is short of. Before he knows it, he is living in an abandoned quonset hut and then on the street, where he crosses paths with poet Silver Mendez, a survivor of the 1960s whose luck has run out, and Gus Hernandez, a show more compadre from his days at the bank. The ups and downs of the lives of men who are always looking for a way to earn a cup of coffee with plenty of sugar and cream, their desperate ingenuity, their hunger, their dauntless optimism have never been brought to life as vividly as in this sweet, sad, funny trio of interlocking stories by one of America's most original writers. show lessTags
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Gary Soto is a poet.
I've never read any of his poetry, and I'm not that interested in poetry, but he writes prose like the best poet that ever existed.
I've read other books and short stories that describe mundane things. Those books can be boring. But Gary Soto, the poet, packs meaning and beauty into every detail of this book. He can (and does) descibe a dog taking a dump and makes it important and meaningful.
This book is about poverty. It's about what happens when a non-homeless person becomes homeless. What do you spend your last $100 on when you have no way to get more money? What about your last $5? It's really quite fascinating.
A+++ would read again.
I've never read any of his poetry, and I'm not that interested in poetry, but he writes prose like the best poet that ever existed.
I've read other books and short stories that describe mundane things. Those books can be boring. But Gary Soto, the poet, packs meaning and beauty into every detail of this book. He can (and does) descibe a dog taking a dump and makes it important and meaningful.
This book is about poverty. It's about what happens when a non-homeless person becomes homeless. What do you spend your last $100 on when you have no way to get more money? What about your last $5? It's really quite fascinating.
A+++ would read again.
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103+ Works 14,494 Members
Gary Soto was born April 12, 1952, and raised in Fresno California. He graduated from Roosevelt High School and attended Fresno City College, graduating in 1974 with an English degree. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Nation, Plouqhshares, The Iowa Review, Ontario Review and Poetry, which has honored him with the show more Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in Poets in Person. He is one of the youngest poets to appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. Soto has received the Discovery-The Nation Prize, the U.S. Award of the International Poetry Forum, The California Library Association's John and Patricia Beatty Award twice, a Recogniton of Merit from the Claremont Graduate School for Baseball in April, the Silver Medal from The Commonwealth Club of California, and the Tomás Rivera Prize, in addition to fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts twice, and the California Arts Council. For ITVS, he produced the film The Pool Party, which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal. Soto wrote the libretto for an opera titled Nerd-landia for the The Los Angeles Opera. In 1999 he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the PEN Center West Book Award for Petty Crimes. He serves as Young People's Ambassador for the California Rural Legal Assistance and the United Farm Workers of America. Soto is the author of ten poetry collections for adults, with New and Selected Poems a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His recollections Living Up the Street received a Before Columbus Foundation 1985 American Book Award. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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