Nontraditional Family In Gary Soto's Looking For Work

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Gary Soto’s “Looking for Work” is based on a nine-year old Mexican-American boy who wants his nontraditional family to imitate the “perfect families” he sees on television. Television shows seem to have impacted Soto’s way of thinking when it comes to his family; Believing theirs to be dysfunctional. Soto shows evidence of his family being dysfunctional when we see unorganized dinner gatherings and improper manners at the dinner table, as opposed to the ones in his shows. In the story, Soto demonstrates the want for change when he shares a vision of wealth he wants to imitate by stating, “For weeks I had drunk Kool-Aid and watched morning reruns of Father Knows Best, whose family was so uncomplicated in its routine that I very much wanted to …show more content…

In doing so young Soto is showing his form of support for his family, no matter the circumstance. When wanting to rake leaves for money, his neighbor states,” It’s summer, and there ain’t no leaves…but she had a job for me and that was to get her a Coke at the liquor store” (20). In “The Color of Family Ties” Gerstel and Sarkisian remind us that family is not just about the ways we look and speak to each other, nor about an absent father or the amounts of money we have, but they clearly state, “These findings remind us that love and family connections are expressed both through talk and action” (51). His persistence is admirable, although his siblings disagree for we can see unity, strong family connections, and happiness when Soto describes one of his family gatherings stating, “Our own talk at dinner was loud with belly laughs and marked by our pointing forks at one another” (22). Although Soto’s family is not perfect they manage to prove to us that functionality within a family does not come from wealth, but in showing full acceptance in one another financially and psychologically, and to support each other no matter the

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