Barrio Boy: The Story of a Boy's Acculturation - Hardcover

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344 ratings by Goodreads

9780268004408: Barrio Boy: The Story of a Boy's Acculturation

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0268004404 ISBN 13: 9780268004408

This is the remarkable story of one boy’s journey from a Mexican village so small its main street didn’t have a name, to the barrio of Sacramento, California, bustling and thriving in the early decades of the twentieth century. With vivid imagery and a rare gift for re-creating a child’s sense of time and place, Ernesto Galarza gives an account of the early experiences of his extraordinary life—from revolution in Mexico to segregation in the United States.

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Review:

In 1971, at the age of sixty-six, the labour activist, educator and scholar Ernesto Galarza (1905-1984) published "Barrio Boy, " a memoir of the long migration of his family from a small village in the Sierra Madre to California. "Barrio Boy" immediately became a classic of Chicano literature, and on its fortieth anniversary has now been published in a new edition with an introduction by the critic, biographer and short-story writer Ilan Stavans. "Times Literary Supplement""

Galarza s book is about growing up first in Mexico, then in America. To this reader, it is on the same artistic level as "Black Boy "or "Call It Sleep "or even "Huckleberry Finn." . . . As with Wright and Roth and Twain, we are given a near-perfect tale of rising from absolute poverty to middle-class security, but instead of a woeful recounting, it is filled with the joy of discovery: from living in the lively muddy streets of a small village in Nayarit to surviving, wide-eyed, in the lively and noisy barrios of Sacramento. "RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities""

The 40th anniversary edition of Galarza s book, now a standard text in high school and college classrooms, has become so popular that it has . . . achieved the dubious honor of being the subject of study guides and essays available for purchase online. "Occidental College ""

"In 1971, at the age of sixty-six, the labour activist, educator and scholar Ernesto Galarza (1905-1984) published Barrio Boy, a memoir of the long migration of his family from a small village in the Sierra Madre to California. Barrio Boy immediately became a classic of Chicano literature, and on its fortieth anniversary has now been published in a new edition with an introduction by the critic, biographer and short-story writer Ilan Stavans." --Times Literary Supplement

"Galarza's book is about growing up--first in Mexico, then in America. To this reader, it is on the same artistic level as Black Boy or Call It Sleep or even Huckleberry Finn. . . . As with Wright and Roth and Twain, we are given a near-perfect tale of rising from absolute poverty to middle-class security, but instead of a woeful recounting, it is filled with the joy of discovery: from living in the lively muddy streets of a small village in Nayarit to surviving, wide-eyed, in the lively and noisy barrios of Sacramento." --RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities

"The 40th anniversary edition of Galarza's book, now a standard text in high school and college classrooms, has become so popular that it has . . . achieved the dubious honor of being the subject of study guides and essays available for purchase online." --Occidental College

About the Author:

Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984) was a labor organizer, historian, professor, and community activist. When he was eight, he migrated from Jalcocot�n, Nayarit, Mexico, to Sacramento, California, where he worked as a farm laborer. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. In addition to Barrio Boy, he is the author of a number of books, including Strangers in Our Fields (1956), Merchants of Labor (1964), and Spiders in the House and Workers in the Fields (1970). In 1979, Dr. Galarza was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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