Gary Soto, born on April 12, 1952, in Fresno, California, spent most of his time working in the fields to support his family. Like most Mexican American, his parents came and worked in the San Joaquin Valley picking crops such as oranges and cotton. They also helped out with local businesses, many of which were dangerous jobs. Soto’s father died on one of those task and as a result, Gary Soto’s family had to transfer to a different place in Fresno known as Barrio. During his time working, he discovered some works created by several prominent literary figures: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jules Verne, and Robert Frost who set him to become the poet he is today. His experiences in Fresno became the primary source of inspiration in the numerous of poems he had written. He is now a poet well-known by critics for his precision in details and how he writes his poem through the eyes of someone exchanging a nickel and orange for a chocolate bar (Kelly 311). “Oranges” is a two stanza poem with no set amount of lines. There are no rhyme or rhythm. “Oranges” by Gary Soto isn’t a story of just oranges and love, but a story of how poverty or being born in an economic class affect …show more content…
It was mentioned in the book, The Seagulls Book of Poems, under the author’s information that many critics praised him for the way he wrote his poem, it was through “the eye of someone” actually being at the drugstore in December and trading an orange for a chocolate bar (Kelly 311). Relating back to the lens, Gary Soto lost his father at the age of five and moved to another part of Fresno and started working in industrial and agricultural jobs when his family suffered from a financial situation. He was born into the working-class where money is the biggest problem among Mexican American and in the poem, the boy as well, didn’t have enough money to afford the