The author has interviewed anthropologists and town inhabitants to discover the different rituals and their meanings. Includes beautiful photographs. The first part of a four-part bilingual series on how the Day of the Dead is observed in different communities.
On Saturdays, a young girl gets to visit with her European-American grandmother and grandfather, and on Sunday (Domingo) she visits with her Mexican-American Abuelito and Abuelita. Each set of grandparents tell her stories and take her out for fun, and at each household she speaks a different language. Told in Spanish and English.
Gary Soto came from a hard background by anyone's reckoning. His young father died in an industrial accident when Gary was only five years old. His Mexican-American family was struggling and lived in a tough neighborhood--next to a junkyard and across from a pickle factory. All through school, he and his family worked at whatever jobs they could get, including picking fruits as migrant laborers.
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.
